Lunar Gravitational Focusing of Meteoroid Streams and Sporadic Sources |
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Authors: | Peter S Gural |
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Institution: | (1) SAIC, 14668 Lee Road, Chantilly, VA 20151, USA |
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Abstract: | Recent work on the gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams and their threat to satellites and astronauts in the near-Earth
environment has concentrated on Earth acting as the gravitational attractor, totally ignoring the Moon. Though the Moon is
twelve-thousandths the mass of the Earth, it too can focus meteors, albeit at a much greater distance downstream from its
orbital position in space. At the Earth–Moon distance during particular phases of the Moon, slower speed meteoroid streams
with very compact radiant diameters can show meteoroid flux enhancements in Earth’s immediate neighborhood. When the right
geometric alignment occurs, this arises as a narrowed beam of particles of approximately 1,000 km width. For a narrow radiant
of one-tenth degree diameter there is a 10-fold increase in the level of flux passing through the near-Earth environment.
Meteoroid streams with more typical radiant sizes of 1° show at most two times enhancement. For sporadic sources, the enhancement
is found to be insignificant due to the wide angular spread of the diffuse radiant and thus may be considered of little importance. |
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Keywords: | Meteor flux Gravitational focusing |
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