title: Extraterrestrial meteors: a martian meteor and its parent comet.
abstract: Regular meteor showers occur when a planet approaches the orbit of a periodic comet--for example, the Leonid shower is evident around 17 November every year as Earth skims past the dusty trail of comet Tempel-Tuttle. Such showers are expected to occur on Mars as well, and on 7 March last year, the panoramic camera of Spirit, the Mars Exploration Rover, revealed a curious streak across the martian sky. Here we show that the timing and orientation of this streak, and the shape of its light curve, are consistent with the existence of a regular meteor shower associated with the comet Wiseman-Skiff, which could be characterized as martian Cepheids.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 69364 Lyon, France. franck.selsis@ens-lyon.fr
authors.forename: Franck
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Selsis
authors.forename: Mark T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Lemmon
authors.forename: Jérémie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vaubaillon
authors.forename: James F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Bell