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A martian meteor and its parent comet

2005; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 435; Issue: 7042 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/435581a

1476-4687

Franck Selsis, M. T. Lemmon, Jérémie Vaubaillon, J. F. Bell,

Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

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.