Everything about Peter Jenniskens totally explained
Meteor astronomer Dr.
Peter Jenniskens (b. 1962) is a senior research scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the
SETI Institute and at NASA Ames Research Center . His full name is
Petrus Matheus Marie Jenniskens. He is an expert on
meteor showers. Jenniskens is the author of of the 790 page book "Meteor Showers and their Parent Comets" published by
Cambridge University Press in 2006 . Jenniskens is chair of the Task Group on Meteor Shower Nomenclature of Commission 22 of the
International Astronomical Union (2006-2009) . Discovered at Ondrejov Observatory by Peter Plavec,
asteroid "42981 Jenniskens" is named in his honor.
NASA Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaigns
Meteor showers
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 . 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 meteors from long-period comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess) .
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 (Sep. 2004) and Stardust (Jan. 2006) sample return capsules . These airborne missions studied what are artificial meteors to understand what physical conditions the protective heat shield endured during the reentry before being recovered.
An overview of ongoing missions can be found at:
(External Link
).
Other research
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 . 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. In earlier collaborations, he discovered that an unusual viscous form of liguid water can be a common form of
water in
comets and icy satellites (with David F. Blake) and he created the first broad detection-limited survey of
Diffuse Interstellar Bands (with Xavier Désert).
Further Information
Get more info on 'Peter Jenniskens'.
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