The parts of the meteoroid stream originating in comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle crossing the orbits of Mercury, Venus, and Mars

Abstract

The nucleus of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle is the source of meteoroids which frequently impact the Earth as the well-known, most powerful meteor shower Perseids, #7. In addition, the stream splits into several other filaments corresponding to few other meteor showers. In this work, we investigated, if the meteoroids of 109P’s stream also impact the other three terrestrial planets. It appeared that there are meteor showers at Venus and Mars, two with the radiants in the northern and one in the southern ecliptic hemisphere of sky. Interestingly, the positions of the radiant areas of 109P’s showers are almost the same at all three planets, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Any shower being so active as the Perseids was predicted neither at Venus nor at Mars, however. Some meteoroids of one filament of the 109P’s stream also impacts the surface of Mercury, but the corresponding shower is predicted so low in number that it can scarcely be detected.