"It's the Geminid meteor shower," says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "Start watching on Thursday evening, Dec. 13th, around 10 pm local time," he advises. "At first you might not see very many meteors?but be patient. The show really heats up after midnight and by dawn on Friday, Dec. 14th, there could be dozens of bright meteors per hour streaking across the sky."
The Geminids are not ordinary meteors. While most meteor showers come from comets, Geminids come from an asteroid?a near-Earth object named 3200 Phaethon.
"It's very strange," says Cooke. How does an asteroid make a meteor shower?
Comets do it by evaporating. When a comet flies close to the sun, intense heat vaporizes the comet?s "dirty ice" resulting in high-speed jets of comet dust that spew into interplanetary space. When a speck of this comet dust hits Earth's atmosphere traveling ~100,000 mph, it disintegrates in a bright flash of light?a meteor!
I love meteor showers. Hopefully I'll be able to catch this one.
Me too but they can be damn infuriating, especially if watching with someone else - "There's one", "Damn, missed it". "Theres another one", "Where?", "It's gone now". "Theres another one", "Aaaaaaaargh!!!"
Me too but they can be damn infuriating, especially if watching with someone else - "There's one", "Damn, missed it". "Theres another one", "Where?", "It's gone now". "Theres another one", "Aaaaaaaargh!!!"
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Humpty, I'll have to stay up late for that