Peter Jenniskens

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Peter Jenniskens
323213main Petersmeteorites 946-710.jpg
Jenniskens in the Nubian Desert, February 2009
Born1962 (age 6162)
Nationality Dutch, American
Education M.S. Leiden University (1988)
Ph.D. Leiden University (1992)
Occupation(s) Astronomer, Explorer
SETI Institute
NASA Ames Research Center

Petrus Matheus Marie (Peter) Jenniskens (born 1962 in Meterik) [1] is a Dutch-American astronomer and a senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute and at NASA Ames Research Center. [2] He is an expert on meteor showers, and wrote the book Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets, published in 2006 and Atlas of Earth’s Meteor Showers, published in 2023. [3] [4] He is past president of Commission 22 of the International Astronomical Union (2012–2015) and was chair of the Working Group on Meteor Shower Nomenclature (2006–2012) after it was first established. [5] [6] Asteroid 42981 Jenniskens is named in his honor.

Contents

In 2008, Jenniskens, together with Muawia Shaddad, led a team from the University of Khartoum in Sudan that recovered fragments of asteroid 2008 TC3 in the Nubian Desert, marking the first time meteorite fragments had been found from an object that was previously tracked in outer space before hitting Earth. [7] [8]

NASA Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaigns

Meteor showers

Since October 2010, Jenniskens has developed the global Cameras for All-Sky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) project to map our meteor showers. Meteor showers are detected by triangulating the path of meteors recorded in a low-light video camera surveillance of the night sky displayed at meteorshowers.seti.org . [9]

Jenniskens is the principal investigator of NASA's Leonid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Leonid MAC), a series of four airborne missions that fielded modern instrumental techniques to study the 1998 - 2002 Leonids meteor storms. [10] These missions helped develop meteor storm prediction models, detected the signature of organic matter in the wake of meteors as a potential precursor to origin-of-life chemistry, and discovered many new aspects of meteor radiation.

More recent meteor shower missions include the Aurigid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Aurigid MAC), which studied a rare September 1, 2007, outburst of Aurigids from long-period comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess), [11] and the Quadrantid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Quadrantid MAC), which studied the January 3, 2008, Quadrantids. [12]

Jenniskens identified several important mechanisms of how our meteor showers originate. Since 2003, Jenniskens identified the Quadrantids parent body 2003 EH1 , and several others, as new examples of how fragmenting comets are the dominant source of meteor showers. [13] These objects are now recognized as the main source of our zodiacal dust cloud. [14] Before that, he predicted and observed the 1995 Alpha Monocerotids meteor outburst (with members of the Dutch Meteor Society), proving that "stars fell like rain at midnight" because the dust trails of long-period comets wander on occasion in Earth's path.

Spacecraft reentries

His research also includes artificial meteors. Jenniskens is the principal investigator of NASA's Genesis and Stardust Entry Observing Campaigns to study the fiery return from interplanetary space of the Genesis (September 2004), Stardust (January 2006), and Hayabusa (June 2010) sample return capsules. [15] The beautiful reentry of JAXA's Hayabusa probe over Australia on 13 June 2010 also included the disintegrating main spacecraft. [16] These airborne missions studied what physical conditions the protective heat shield endured during the reentry before being recovered.

More recently, Jenniskens led a mission to study the destructive entry of ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle Jules Verne on 29 September 2008, [17] Orbital ATK's Cygnus OA6 reentry on 22 June 2016, [18] and the spectacular daytime re-entry of space debris object WT1190F near Sri-Lanka to practice a future observation of an impacting asteroid. [19]

Small asteroid impacts and meteorite recovery

2023 CX1 fragments recovery

In 2023, small asteroid 2023 CX1 was spotted in space and four hours prior to impact announced as a likely impactor. When the final trajectory showed that meteorites would have fallen over land in Normandy, France, Jenniskens joined Francois Colas of IMCCE/Paris Observatory and other researchers and citizen scientists of FRIPON/Vigie-Ciel and guided the group to their first recovery of a 95g meteorite later that day. The next day, Jenniskens found the second meteorite, with a mass of 3 gram, the location of which verified the wind drift to which small meteorites were exposed. This established the location of the meteorite strewn field. In subsequent weeks, over 20 more meteorites were found with masses in the range 2g to 350g.

2018 LA fragments recovery

In 2018, a second asteroid 2018 LA was spotted in space and tracked to an impact over land. Working with Oliver Moses of the Okavango Research Institute of the University of Maun, Jenniskens triangulated the fall from video records to an area in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Moses and Jenniskens then joined Alexander Proyer of BUIST and Mohutsiwa Gabadirwe of the Botswana Geoscience Institute in a search expedition, which led to the recovery of an 18 gram fragment on June 23, 2018. Twenty-two more meteorites were found in October that year. In 2021, the results from the international 2018 LA meteorite consortium study was published, [20] tracing the fragments of asteroid 2018 LA to an impact crater on Vesta.

2008 TC3 fragments recovery

The recovery of fragments of asteroid 2008 TC3 marked the first time fragments had been found from an object that was previously tracked in outer space before hitting Earth. [7] This search was led by Peter Jenniskens and Muawia Shaddad of the University of Khartoum in Sudan, and carried out with help from students and staff of the University of Khartoum. The search of the impact zone began on December 6, 2008, and turned up 24 pounds (11 kg) of rocks in about 600 fragments. [7] [8] [21] This also proved the first well documented recovery of many different meteorite types from a single fall.

Sutter's Mill

The next biggest impact over land occurred in California's gold country on April 22, 2012. One of the fragments landed at Sutter's Mill, the very site where gold was first discovered in 1848 that led to the California Gold Rush. Jenniskens found one of three fragments of this CM chondrite on April 24, before rains hit the area. [22] The rapid recovery was made possible because Doppler weather radar detected the falling meteorites. A consortium study led by Jenniskens traced these meteorites back to a source region in the asteroid belt: a family of asteroids that move at low inclination and are close to the 3:1 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter. These were the first CM chondrites to be recovered from near the surface of the original parent body before it broke up, creating the asteroid family. [23]

Novato

Half a year later, in the evening of October 17, 2012, a bright fireball was seen near San Francisco. The first Novato meteorite, an L6 type chondrite fragmental breccia, was found by Novato resident Lisa Webber following Jenniskens' publication of the trajectory of the fireball from video recorded by stations of his Cameras for Allsky Meteor Surveillance project (CAMS). [24]

Chelyabinsk

Three weeks after the February 15, 2013, Chelyabinsk meteor, Jenniskens participated in a Russian Academy of Sciences fact finding mission to Chelyabinsk Oblast. [25] Over 50 villages were visited to map the extent of the glass damage. Traffic video records were collected to map the shock wave arrival times. In order to determine the meteoroid entry speed and angle, star background calibration images were taken and shadow obstacle dimensions were measured at sites where video cameras recorded the fireball and its shadows. Eyewitnesses were interviewed to learn about injuries, heat sensations, sunburn, smells and where meteorites were found. Meteorites found shortly after the fall by Chelyabinsk State University colleagues were analyzed and the results from this consortium study were published in Science . [26]

Other research

In earlier collaborations, he discovered that an unusual viscous form of liquid water can be a common form of amorphous ice in comets and icy satellites (during a post-doc study with David F. Blake) [27] and he created the first broad detection-limited survey of Diffuse Interstellar Bands in his PhD thesis work with Xavier Désert. [28]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meteorite</span> Solid debris from outer space that hits a planetary surface

A meteorite is a rock that originated in outer space and has fallen to the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting star; astronomers call the brightest examples "bolides". Once it settles on the larger body's surface, the meteor becomes a meteorite. Meteorites vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a meteorite large enough to create an impact crater.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tunguska event</span> 1908 meteor air burst explosion in Siberia

The Tunguska event was a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908. The explosion over the sparsely populated East Siberian taiga flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi) of forest, and eyewitness accounts suggest up to three people may have died. The explosion is generally attributed to a meteor air burst, the atmospheric explosion of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres wide. The asteroid approached from the east-south-east, probably with a relatively high speed of about 27 km/s (60,000 mph). Though the incident is classified as an impact event, the object is thought to have exploded at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres rather than hitting the Earth's surface, leaving no impact crater.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meteoroid</span> Sand- to boulder-sized particle of debris in the Solar System

A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are distinguished as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than meteoroids are classified as micrometeoroids or space dust. Many are fragments from comets or asteroids, whereas others are collision impact debris ejected from bodies such as the Moon or Mars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact event</span> Collision of two astronomical objects

An impact event is a collision between astronomical objects causing measurable effects. Impact events have been found to regularly occur in planetary systems, though the most frequent involve asteroids, comets or meteoroids and have minimal effect. When large objects impact terrestrial planets such as the Earth, there can be significant physical and biospheric consequences, as the impacting body is usually traveling at several kilometres a second, though atmospheres mitigate many surface impacts through atmospheric entry. Impact craters and structures are dominant landforms on many of the Solar System's solid objects and present the strongest empirical evidence for their frequency and scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meteor shower</span> Celestial event caused by streams of meteoroids entering Earths atmosphere

A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth's surface. Very intense or unusual meteor showers are known as meteor outbursts and meteor storms, which produce at least 1,000 meteors an hour, most notably from the Leonids. The Meteor Data Centre lists over 900 suspected meteor showers of which about 100 are well established. Several organizations point to viewing opportunities on the Internet. NASA maintains a daily map of active meteor showers.

The Quadrantids (QUA) are a meteor shower that peaks in early January and whose radiant lies in the constellation Boötes. The zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of this shower can be as high as that of two other reliably rich meteor showers, the Perseids in August and the Geminids in December, yet Quadrantid meteors are not seen as often as those of the two other showers because the time frame of the peak is exceedingly narrow, sometimes lasting only hours. Moreover, the meteors are quite faint, with mean apparent magnitudes between 3.0 and 6.0.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tagish Lake (meteorite)</span> Stony meteorite

The Tagish Lake meteorite fell at 16:43 UTC on 18 January 2000 in the Tagish Lake area in northwestern British Columbia, Canada.

<span class="nowrap">2008 TC<sub>3</sub></span> 2008 asteroid-type meteoroid

2008 TC3 (Catalina Sky Survey temporary designation 8TA9D69) was an 80-tonne (80-long-ton; 90-short-ton), 4.1-meter (13 ft) diameter asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere on October 7, 2008. It exploded at an estimated 37 kilometers (23 mi) above the Nubian Desert in Sudan. Some 600 meteorites, weighing a total of 10.5 kilograms (23.1 lb), were recovered; many of these belonged to a rare type known as ureilites, which contain, among other minerals, nanodiamonds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ureilite</span> Rare type of stony meteorite

Ureilite is a rare type of stony meteorite that has a unique mineralogical composition very different from that of other stony meteorites. This dark grey or brownish meteorite type is named after the village Novy Urey (Cyrillic: Новый Урей), Mordovia Republic of Russia, where a meteorite of this type fell on 4 September 1886. Notable ureilites are the Novo Urei and the Goalpara, also named for the town in which it landed (Goalpara, Assam India). On 7 October 2008, tiny asteroid 2008 TC3 entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded an estimated 37 kilometres (23 mi) above the Nubian Desert in Sudan. Fragments of this asteroid were recovered the following December and were found to be ureilite. Scientists have discovered amino acids in meteorite 2008 TC3 where none were expected, taking into account high temperatures reached in the explosion of about 1000 °C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meteor air burst</span> Atmospheric explosion of a meteor

A meteor air burst is a type of air burst in which a meteoroid explodes after entering a planetary body's atmosphere. This fate leads them to be called fireballs or bolides, with the brightest air bursts known as superbolides. Such meteoroids were originally asteroids and comets of a few to several tens of meters in diameter. This separates them from the much smaller and far more common "shooting stars", that usually burn up quickly upon atmospheric entry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earth-grazing fireball</span> Meteoroid that enters Earths atmosphere and leaves again

An Earth-grazing fireball is a fireball, a very bright meteor that enters Earth’s atmosphere and leaves again. Some fragments may impact Earth as meteorites, if the meteor starts to break up or explodes in mid-air. These phenomena are then called Earth-grazing meteor processions and bolides. Famous examples of Earth-grazers are the 1972 Great Daylight Fireball and the Meteor Procession of July 20, 1860.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sutter's Mill meteorite</span> Meteorite that fell to Earth on 22 April 2012

The Sutter's Mill meteorite is a carbonaceous chondrite which entered the Earth's atmosphere and broke up at about 07:51 Pacific Time on April 22, 2012, with fragments landing in the United States. The name comes from Sutter's Mill, a California Gold Rush site, near which some pieces were recovered. Meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens assigned Sutter's Mill (SM) numbers to each meteorite, with the documented find location preserving information about where a given meteorite was located in the impacting meteoroid. As of May 2014, 79 fragments had been publicly documented with a find location. The largest (SM53) weighs 205 grams (7.2 oz), and the second largest (SM50) weighs 42 grams (1.5 oz).

Josep Maria Trigo Rodríguez is a Spanish astronomer, astrophysicist and science writer. His work focuses on the early development of the solar system. He is the cofounder of the Spanish Meteor Network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novato meteorite</span>

The Novato meteorite is an ordinary chondrite which entered the Earth's atmosphere and broke up over Northern California at 19:44 Pacific Time on 17 October 2012. The falling bolide created a bright fireball and sonic booms and fragmented into smaller pieces as the intense friction of passing through the atmosphere heated it and absorbed its kinetic energy. The meteoroid was about 35 centimeters (14 in) across.

This is a glossary of terms used in meteoritics, the science of meteorites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chelyabinsk meteor</span> Near-Earth asteroid that fell over Russia in 2013

The Chelyabinsk meteor was a superbolide that entered Earth's atmosphere over the southern Ural region in Russia on 15 February 2013 at about 09:20 YEKT. It was caused by an approximately 18 m (59 ft) diameter, 9,100-tonne (10,000-short-ton) near-Earth asteroid that entered the atmosphere at a shallow 18.3 ± 0.4 degree angle with a speed relative to Earth of 19.16 ± 0.15 kilometres per second. The light from the meteor was briefly brighter than the Sun, visible as far as 100 km (60 mi) away. It was observed in a wide area of the region and in neighbouring republics. Some eyewitnesses also reported feeling intense heat from the fireball.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chelyabinsk meteorite</span> Remains of the Chelyabinsk meteor

The Chelyabinsk meteorite is the fragmented remains of the large Chelyabinsk meteor of 15 February 2013 which reached the ground after the meteor's passage through the atmosphere. The descent of the meteor, visible as a brilliant superbolide in the morning sky, caused a series of shock waves that shattered windows, damaged approximately 7,200 buildings and left 1,491 people injured. The resulting fragments were scattered over a wide area.

The Qingyang event was a presumed meteor shower or air burst that took place near Qingyang in March or April 1490. The area was at the time part of Shaanxi, but is now in Gansu province. A 1994 study in the journal Meteoritics tentatively explained this event as a meteor air burst.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2018 LA</span>

2018 LA, also known as ZLAF9B2, was a small Apollo near-Earth asteroid 2.6–3.8 m (9–12 ft) in mean diameter that impacted the atmosphere with small fragments reaching the Earth at roughly 16:44 UTC on 2 June 2018 near the border of Botswana and South Africa. It had been discovered only 8 hours earlier by the Mount Lemmon Survey, Arizona and based on 1+12 hours of observations, was calculated to have a roughly 85% chance of impact likely somewhere between Australia and Madagascar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cameras for All-Sky Meteor Surveillance</span> Meteor shower observatory

CAMS is a NASA-sponsored international project that tracks and triangulates meteors during night-time video surveillance in order to map and monitor meteor showers. Data processing is housed at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute in California, USA. Goal of CAMS is to validate the International Astronomical Union's Working List of Meteor Showers, discover new meteor showers, and predict future meteor showers.

References

  1. Derix, Govert (2012). "Waren de goden meteorieten?" [Were the gods meteorites?]. Zuid Magazine (in Dutch). Vol. 3, no. 14. p. 24.
  2. Career pages of astronomer Dr. Peter Jenniskens
  3. Jenniskens P., Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 790 pp.
  4. "Atlas of Earth's Meteor Showers - 1st Edition". shop.elsevier.com. Retrieved 2023-11-18.
  5. IAU Meteor Data Center
  6. "International Astronomical Union | IAU". www.iau.org. Retrieved 2023-11-20.
  7. 1 2 3 "NASA Team Finds Riches in Meteorite Treasure Hunt". NASA. 2009-03-27. Retrieved 2009-04-05.
  8. 1 2 Jenniskens, P.; et al. (2009-03-26). "The impact and recovery of asteroid 2008 TC3". Nature . 458 (7237): 485–488. Bibcode:2009Natur.458..485J. doi:10.1038/nature07920. PMID   19325630. S2CID   7976525.
  9. "NASA Meteor Shower Portal". SETI Institute.
  10. "NASA's Leonid Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign Homepage". NASA.
  11. "The NASA Aurigid Meteor Shower Observing Campaign". SETI Institute.
  12. "The NASA Quadrantid Meteor Shower Observing Campaign". SETI Institute.
  13. Jenniskens, P. (2004). "2003 EH1 is the Quadrantid Shower Parent Comet". The Astronomical Journal. 127 (5): 3018–3022. Bibcode:2004AJ....127.3018J. doi: 10.1086/383213 . S2CID   122150153.
  14. Nesvorný, David; Jenniskens, Peter; Levison, Harold F.; Bottke, William F.; Vokrouhlický, David; Gounelle, Matthieu (2010). "Cometary Origin of the Zodiacal Cloud and Carbonaceous Micrometeorites. Implications for hot debris disks". Astrophysical Journal. 713 (2): 816–836. arXiv: 0909.4322 . Bibcode:2010ApJ...713..816N. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/713/2/816. S2CID   18865066 . Retrieved 2010-04-20.
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  17. "The ATV-1 Jules Verne Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign". SETI Institute.
  18. "The Cygnus OA6 Re-Entry Observation Campaign". SETI Institute.
  19. "The WT1190F Re-Entry Observation Campaign". SETI Institute.
  20. Jenniskens, Peter; et al. (2021). "The impact and recovery of asteroid 2018 LA". Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 56 (4): 844–893. arXiv: 2105.05997 . Bibcode:2021M&PS...56..844J. doi:10.1111/maps.13653. ISSN   1945-5100. PMC   7611328 . PMID   34295141. S2CID   234482675.
  21. "The Impact and Recovery of 2008 TC3". SETI Institute.
  22. "The Sutter's Mill meteorite fall". SETI Institute.
  23. Jenniskens, Peter; et al. (2012). "Radar-Enabled Recovery of the Sutter's Mill Meteorite, a Carbonaceous Chondrite Regolith Breccia". Science. 338 (6114): 1583–1587. Bibcode:2012Sci...338.1583J. doi:10.1126/science.1227163. hdl: 2060/20140017286 . PMID   23258889. S2CID   206543838.
  24. Jenniskens, Peter; et al. (2014). "Fall, recovery, and characterization of the Novato L6 chondrite breccia". Meteoritics & Planetary Science. 49 (8): 1388–1425. Bibcode:2014M&PS...49.1388J. doi:10.1111/maps.12323. S2CID   52993301. (Erratum:  doi:10.1111/maps.13415)
  25. "Images from the Chelyabinsk Airburst field campaign". SETI Institute.
  26. Popova, Olga P.; et al. (2013). "Chelyabinsk Airburst, Damage Assessment, Meteorite Recovery, and Characterization". Science. 342 (6162): 1069–1073. Bibcode:2013Sci...342.1069P. doi:10.1126/science.1242642. hdl: 10995/27561 . PMID   24200813. S2CID   30431384.
  27. Jenniskens, Peter; Blake, David F. (1994). "Structural Transitions in Amorphous Water Ice and Astrophysical Implications". Science. 265 (5173): 753–756. Bibcode:1994Sci...265..753J. doi:10.1126/science.11539186. PMID   11539186.
  28. Jenniskens, P. (1992). Organic Matter in Interstellar Extinction (PhD Thesis). The Netherlands: Leiden University.