On Earth , we ’re golden if we can see a few hundred meteors an time of day during a meteor shower . If you were on Mars three years ago , however , you would have seen something noteworthy – 108,000 shooting star per minute , the biggest shooting star exhibitioner in read story on any planet .
This was the outcome of Comet C/2013 A1 ( Siding Spring ) passing the major planet on October 19 , 2014 . We were rosy to have a few spacecraft in orbit back then , and what they see was incredible . finding from the event werepresented yesterdayat the European Planetary Science Congress ( EPSC ) 2017 in Riga , Latvia .
“ This is one of the most exciting planetary events that we ’ll see in our lifetime , ” said Dr Beatriz Sanchez - Cano from the University of Leicester , who co - presented the findings . “ Mars was literally engulfed by the comatoseness , the comet ’s outer ambience , for several hour . ”
Siding Spring flew past Mars at a length of 140,000 kilometer ( 87,000 Swedish mile ) , an event that ’s thought to happen only once every 100,000 years . And as it did so , it left a trail of junk that entered the Martian atmosphere .
Observations by NASA ’s MAVEN Orbiter show that there would have been 30 meteor per endorsement in the Martian sky for up to three hours – or 108,000 meteors per hour . That is really an unbelievable amount . On Earth , our record exhibitioner was belike the Leonids meteor cascade in 1833 , which saw100,000 meteorsper time of day dazzle percipient .
Studying the event was somewhat difficult because it appears Mars washit by an eruptionfrom the Sun about 44 hours before the comet pilot by . But MAVEN gathered enough information to reveal the biggest ever meteor shower bath in the Solar System .
Meteor showers on Earth are caused when we fly through the dust trail of a comet . These happen on regular occasions , such as the Perseids every August from Comet Swift - Tuttle , or the Leonids every November from Comet Tempel - Tuttle .
For Mars , this really was a once - in - a - lifetime issue . Siding Spring originated in the Oort cloud , a immense area of comets on the bound of the Solar System , and is now maneuver back in that direction . It will be millions of years before it issue forth by again . possibly next meter , we ’ll be ready and waiting on the control surface of Mars .
