[meteorite-list] Geminids on Toutatis?

[Chris Peterson]

Ah.

Well, all asteroids show impacts. The impact rate is low because of the 
small cross section, but there is lots of time. Debris streams are 
mostly short lived- a few thousand years- so I don't know how much they 
contribute to asteroid impacts. And it's worth keeping in mind that 
there are far more debris streams that are not Earth-crossing than 
otherwise. Asteroids may encounter dense streams that are not associated 
with any showers because those streams don't impact the Earth.

I'm sure that when we are able to image the surface of Toutatis at high 
resolution, we'll see impact structures. And it's possible that some 
might have been produced by Geminid debris. But most not, and I doubt 
there is any way to tell which streams produced which impacts.

The key issue with respect to relatively short flybys is that even in 
the densest of debris streams, impacts on a small body like Toutatis 
will be very infrequent, so the odds of catching one in some sort of 
before/after image pair seem extremely small. Also, Geminid debris is so 
small that we're almost certainly talking about impact structures under 
a meter in size, so pretty high resolution imaging would be required.

Chris

*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 12/19/2012 2:37 AM, Francis Graham wrote:
> Hi Chris
>     Thanks for your reply. Ah! You misunderstood my message.
> Certainly,no impacts on Toutatis could have been resolved from Earth
> observation; I suggested it was only remotely  possible in Chang'e
> imagery of Toutatis, and then it wasn't too probable.  As it turned
> out, no impacts happened during the encounter. But in future
> encounters of near Earth objects by spacecraft during meteor showers,
> it might be looked for again, but not expected.
>     I think it was the character of Charlie Chan who once said,
> "Strange events sometimes permit themselves the luxury of having
> occurred."
> Francis Graham