Formation, Structure, and Detectability of the Geminids Meteoroid Stream

Abstract

The Geminids meteoroid stream produces one of the most intense meteor showers at Earth. It is an unusual stream in that its parent body is understood to be an asteroid, (3200) Phaethon, unlike most streams which are formed via ongoing cometary activity. Until recently, our primary understanding of this stream came from Earth-based measurements of the Geminids meteor shower. However, the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft has transited near the core of the stream close to its perihelion and provides a new platform to better understand this unique stream. Here, we create a dynamical model of the Geminids meteoroid stream, calibrate its total density to Earth-based measurements, and compare this model to recent observations of the dust environment near the Sun by PSP. For the formation mechanisms considered, we find the core of the meteoroid stream predominantly lies interior to its parent body orbit and expect grains in the stream to be $\gtrsim$10 $\mu$m in radius. Data-model comparisons of the location of the stream relative to Phaethon's orbit are more consistent with a catastrophic formation scenario, in contrast to cometary formation. Finally, while PSP transits very near the core of the stream, the impact rate expected by Geminids meteoroids is orders of magnitude below the impact rates observed by PSP, and hence undetectable in-situ. We similarly expect the upcoming DESTINY+ mission to be unable to detect appreciable quantities of Geminids grains far from (3200) Phaethon.

13 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• The Near-Sun Dust Environment: Initial Observations from Parker Solar Probe
• Modelling DESTINY+ interplanetary and interstellar dust measurements en route to the active asteroid (3200) Phaethon
• Parker Solar Probe Observations of a Dust Trail in the Orbit of (3200) Phaethon
• Asteroid (3200) Phaethon: colors, phase curve, limits on cometary activity and fragmentation
• Continued PSP/WISPR Observations of a Phaethon-related Dust Trail
• Electrostatic Dust Ejection From Asteroid (3200) Phaethon With the Aid of Mobile Alkali Ions at Perihelion
• Characterizing the Daytime Sextantids Meteor Shower and Unveiling the Nature of the Phaethon-Geminid Stream Complex

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Size distribution of small grains in the inner zodiacal cloud
• Age of Geminids Derived from the Statistics of Meteoroid Orbits