Twin fireballs could have come from a small comet
OCT 28, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024783
SPACE.com : Comets shed material along their orbits. When Earth’s orbit takes our planet through those debris-strewn paths, terrestrial observers see meteor showers in the night sky. On 16 October, automatic sky-watching cameras captured two meteorlike fireballs streaking across the sky. No big meteor showers usually occur on that day, so it came as a surprise that an analysis of the fireballs’ trajectory pointed suggestively to comet Hartley 2 as the source. Unlike comet Tempel-Tuttle, which spawns the famous Leonid meteor shower in November, comet Hartley 2 is thought to be too small to beget meteors. The case remains open.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
