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Newly Detected Chi Phoenicid Meteor Shower

Newly Detected Chi Phoenicid Meteor Shower

chi phoenicids

The ongoing night-time video surveillance of the night sky called "CAMS" has discovered a meteor shower caused by yet another unknown long-period comet that passed close to Earth's orbit in a past return. SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens reports that this shower was briefly seen on June 10 by southern hemisphere networks of the CAMS project in New Zealand, Namibia and Chile (see the map for June 10 at this project website: http://cams.seti.org/FDL/). The meteoroid stream is unusual in that its orbit is nearly exactly perpendicular to the plane of the planets, having an inclination of 90.2 +/- 1.0 degrees. The shower has received the name "chi Phoenicids" and has been added as number 1036 to the list of meteor shower names maintained by the International Astronomical Union. A telegram announcing the discovery (CBET 4798) was issued today.

Chi Phoenicids Plot

Link to the telegram: 
http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/cbet/RecentCBETs.html

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