Parker Solar Probe Observations of a Phaethon-related Dust Trail

We present details and latest findings regarding a dust trail related to active asteroid 3200/Phaethon, discovered in 2018 in white-light observations recorded by the Wide Field Image for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument on the NASA Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft. Based on the 2018 PSP/WISPR observations, the trail was initially suspected to be a small portion of the Geminid meteor complex, and appeared to be perfectly following the orbit of Phaethon. However, subsequent observations over more than ten PSP orbits have revealed the trail clearly deviates - albeit perhaps by as little as 1o in periapsis - from the orbit of Phaethon. These observations raise many questions regarding the possible relationship between the trail and the Geminids, as well as the reasons for its lack of detection until now and the circumstances that have led PSP/WISPR to observe it. In this presentation, we provide a summary of our findings thus far, including any updated results from the most recent PSP/WISPR data sets. In particular we will discuss the relationship (or not) of the trail to the broader Geminid complex, potential origins of the trail if not related to the Geminid formation, our current thinking on the trail's dust properties, and our proposed modeling efforts to determine the origins, evolution, and nature of the PSP/WISPR-observed dust trail.