Possibly Significant Meteor Activity From Very Young Dust Ejecta From Comet 15P/Finlay

ATel #14947; Quanzhi Ye (UMd), Jeremie Vaubaillon (IMCCE/Observatoire de Paris/PSL, France), Mikiya Sato (NAOJ), Mikhail Maslov (Novosibirsk State Univ/Novosibirsk State Technical Univ)
on 1 Oct 2021; 00:28 UT
Credential Certification: Quanzhi Ye (qye@umd.edu)

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Our independent calculations have predicted a possible new meteor activity originated from Jupiter-family comet 15P/Finlay. In particular, P/Finlay experienced two strong outbursts in its last apparition in 2014/15 (cf. Ye et al. 2015, ApJ 814, 79; Ishiguro et al. 2016, AJ 152, 169), of which the ejecta is predicted to come in the path of the Earth this year, hence significant meteor activity (with a small chance of reaching storm level) is possible. The predicted encounter with the 2014 ejecta is between approximately 2021 October 6, 2200 UT, and 2021 October 7, 0100 UT, as summarized in the table below. The significant scatter in predicted peak times calculated by different researchers is likely due to the very shallow orbit of the stream with respect to the ecliptic plane. The radiant is located near RA=256 deg and Dec=-48 deg, favoring observers in South America and Antarctica. The outburst is likely dominated by faint meteors around visual magnitude of +8; however, visual monitoring is still strongly encouraged as the technique is widely accessible and will examine a different size regime (close to cm-class meteoroids). Observations of this meteor shower will provide important constraints on the dust size distribution in the mm/cm-class regime of this very young dust ejecta and allow comparison with comet observations. Several other minor outbursts caused by the ejecta from earlier apparitions of P/Finlay are also expected (Maslov, unpublished; Vaubaillon et al. 2020, JIMO 48, 29).