Astronomers caught a whole new meteor shower in the southern hemisphere night sky. A shower of racing stars appeared as the Earth passed through space through a stream of dusty matter scattered by comet 15P / Finlay. The study of the celestial show, which astronomers have named the Arid meteor shower because it appeared as a strip from the constellation Ara, provides researchers with an insight into the composition of the comet.
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Scientists have routinely observed the 15P / Finlay comet since it was discovered in 1886. In recent years, a number of independent analyzes have indicated that our planet will glide through the dense clouds of dust left by the comet in 2021, which the comet left as it passed through the internal solar system in 1995, 2008 and 2014. Although no one knew for sure that the forecasts would be converted to visible meteors.
To find out, observers across South America were on standby as the nights of expected activity approached, towards late September and early October. Some researchers have even deployed troops with expert meteor cameras to Chile’s locked sites.
The fact that many groups were able to successfully observe meteors at predicted times filled meteor scientists with excitement. “I’ve been working on this topic for twenty years, this is the first time I’ve seen the birth of a new meteor shower,” says Jérémie Vauballion of L’Observatoire de Paris, a researcher at the Paris Observatory who is one of the researchers who made predictions about meteor activity.
Researchers have not yet figured out whether Arids will reappear in the future, but the 2021 event will provide valuable data for astronomers to immerse themselves in the subject.
Ye Quanzhi, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, who also modeled the dust stream from comet 15P / Finlay, compared meteors to sampling missions (when gentlemen are sent to extraterrestrial sites to collect samples). “The comets are loose collections of dust and ice, so by studying meteorites as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, we learn something about the building blocks of comets,” Quanzhi says.
In particular, Ye wants to study the size distribution of the dust particles left by the comet. This is essentially a measure of how many large particles there are compared to the small ones and this can be calculated by looking at the amount of bright and faint meteors detected during the Arid shower.
“The size distribution of the dust is observable, which is relatively easy to measure, and this provides clues as to how the small comet grains of sand stick together,” Ye says.
(Source: New Scientist)
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