Since that time, the Geminids have grown to become one of the most major showers of the year. During its peak, Geminid meteors can be seen per hour under perfect conditions. The Geminids are bright and fast meteors and tend to be yellow in colour. It travels at , km per hour or 35 km per second. Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets.
Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison. From Leonid Meteor Showers to partial lunar eclipse: Here a list of celestial events in November to look out for.
And mark the shortest day of the year on the northern winter solstice. The second week of December heralds the beginning of the strongest meteor shower of the year — the Geminids. The Geminids are active every December, when Earth passes through a massive trail of dusty debris shed by a weird, rocky object named Phaethon. There is another object — an Apollo asteroid named UD — that is in a dynamically similar orbit to Phaethon, prompting speculation that the two were once part of a larger body that split apart or collided with another asteroid.
Most shower meteors are shed by comets when their orbits take them into the inner Solar System, but the Geminids may be the debris from this long-ago breakup or collision event. When you consider that the Geminid meteor stream has more mass than any other meteor shower, including the Perseids, whatever happened back then must have been pretty spectacular. The nearly First Quarter Moon sets around p. Find the darkest place you can, and give your eyes about 30 minutes to adapt to the dark.
Avoid looking at your cell phone, as it will mess up your night vision. Lie flat on your back and look straight up, taking in as much sky as possible. You will soon start to see Geminid meteors. As the night progresses, the Geminid rate will increase, hitting a theoretical maximum of about per hour around 2 a. Bear in mind, this rate is for a perfect observer under perfect skies with Gemini straight overhead.
The actual number for folks out in the dark countryside will be slightly more than 1 per minute. Folks in suburbs will see fewer, 30 to 40 per hour depending on the lighting conditions.
And those downtown in major cities will see practically nothing — even though the Geminids are rich in beautiful green fireballs, the lights of New York, San Francisco, or Atlanta will blot even them out.
Dark clear skies are the most important ingredient in observing meteor showers. We are actually going to have a comet visible to the unaided eye this holiday season! Binoculars or a small telescope are good for taking a peak at Wirtanen, so bring them along for your night of Geminid watching. A green comet to complement the green fireballs! The Geminids are a meteor shower that occurs in December every year.
The Geminid meteor shower is caused by a stream of debris left by the asteroid, Phaethon. Let your eyes get adjusted to the dark — you will see more meteors that way. If you see a meteor, try and trace it backwards. Given clear weather and dark skies, the Geminid meteor shower can be seen by most of the world, though it is best viewed by observers in the northern hemisphere. These colours are partly caused by the presence of traces of metals like sodium and calcium, the same effect that is used to make fireworks colourful.
The shower has been known produce over meteors per hour at its peak, although light pollution and other factors mean that in reality, the actual number visible is far less.
Geminids meteors appear to radiate from near the bright star Castor in the constellation Gemini. However, the actual source of the shooting stars is a stream of debris left behind by asteroid Phaethon, making this one of the only major showers not to originate from a comet.
Find more meteor showers this year. The Geminid meteor shower is one of the most active showers of the year, and in some years is the strongest, with a peak rate of around meteors per hour. It is the one major shower that shows good activity before midnight. The Geminids, as their name implies, appear to emanate from the bright constellation Gemini, the twins. To find Gemini in the Northern Hemisphere, look in the southwestern sky for the constellation Orion, the hunter , which is easy to spot by the three stars in the hunter's "belt.
In the Southern Hemisphere, Gemini appears to the lower right of Orion and both will hang in the northwestern sky. Although the meteors will appear to stream away from Gemini, they can appear all across the sky. For best results, you should look slightly away from Gemini so that you can see meteors with longer "tails" as they streak by; staring directly at Gemini will just show you meteors that don't travel very far. The Geminids are associated with the near-Earth object Phaethon , an asteroid that may have undergone a collision with another object in the distant past to produce the stream of particles that Earth runs into — creating the meteor shower.
The asteroid orbits the sun every 1. It occasionally comes close to Earth at a safe distance and also passes very close to the sun, inside of Mercury's orbit and only 0.
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