An announcement on the new shower was just issued as a CBET #5046
During the past two nights, CAMS networks on the southern hemisphere have detected a new shower of slow meteors from the constellation "Ara", the Altar. CAMS PI and SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens named the shower simply the "Arids". The shower was entered into the IAU Working List of Meteor Showers under number 1130 and code "ARD". The Arid shower was never seen before, but the event had been predicted by astronomers tracing the evolution of meteoroids ejected by comet 15P/Finlay during its return to the inner solar system in 1995. The stream of particles ejected that year evolved to move in and out of Earth's orbit until Earth was predicted to travel through that stream 26 years later. The observed radiant and apparent entry speed of the meteors, a relatively slow 15.6 km/s, are in agreement with the predictions. "We now have a chance to study this comet from the meteoroids it has shed", Jenniskens said. The shower may show again on October 7, now from debris ejected when the comet returned to the inner solar system in 2008 and 2014. Comet Finlay was discovered from Cape Town, South Africa, by William Finlay on September 26, 1886.
Image and video: Two Arid meteors, caused by debris from comet 15P/Finlay entering Earth's atmosphere, captured by cameras of the Cerro Tololo station of the CAMS Chile network at 04:51 UT on 2021 September 29. Photo: P. Jenniskens/SETI Institute and S. Heathcote/AURA Cerro Tololo.
