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Scattering And Absorption of Light in Planetary Regoliths
Published on: July 1, 2019
Extraterrestrial meteors: a martian meteor and its parent comet
Franck Selsis1, Mark T Lemmon, Jérémie Vaubaillon
1Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 69364 Lyon, France. franck.selsis@ens-lyon.fr
Abstract:
Regular meteor showers occur when a planet approaches the orbit of a periodic comet--for example, the Leonid shower is evident around 17 November every year as Earth skims past the dusty trail of comet Tempel-Tuttle. Such showers are expected to occur on Mars as well, and on 7 March last year, the panoramic camera of Spirit, the Mars Exploration Rover, revealed a curious streak across the martian sky. Here we show that the timing and orientation of this streak, and the shape of its light curve, are consistent with the existence of a regular meteor shower associated with the comet Wiseman-Skiff, which could be characterized as martian Cepheids.
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