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Post Info TOPIC: February Eta Draconids
Blobrana


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RE: February Eta Draconids
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New meteor shower points to a future close encounter

A pair of astronomers monitoring an all-sky camera got a surprise when they checked data from last February: a half dozen meteors all seemed to come from the same spot in the sky, indicating they all had a common origin. After doing some calculations, they found that they probably come from a parent comet with an orbit that's at least 53 years long. Moreover, the orbit of this comet crosses that of the Earth, meaning we may have a close encounter with this object sometime in the future.
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Blobrana


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Unseen comet's orbit indicates possible crash

A stream of dusty fragments from a comet born in the outermost reaches of the solar system has hit the Earth on a path that leads astronomers to conclude the comet itself could be "potentially hazardous" if it crashes into the planet.
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Blobrana


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P. Jenniskens, SETI Institute, reports the detection of a meteor outburst from a previously unknown shower on 2011 February 4 during routine low-light-level video triangulations with NASA's Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) project in California between 2h20m and 14h20m UT.
During that time interval, six meteors radiated from a compact geocentric radiant at R.A. = 239.92 ± 0.50 deg, Decl. = +62.49 ± 0.22 deg, with velocity V_g = 35.58 ± 0.34 km/s.  The times of arrival for the meteors were 6h25m, 7h59m, 10h49m, 11h18m, 12h14m, and 13h33m UT, suggesting that the outburst peaked around 11h UT (solar longitude 315.1 deg) and had a duration of at least 7 hours.
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