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Geminid Meteor Shower
Inferno Intelligence writes: "spaceweather.com is reporting that there will be another meteor shower real soon. They are reporting that '[t]he shower [will] peak on Dec. 13th and 14th!' 'What are the Geminid meteors? Scientists aren't sure. Perhaps chips off an exotic asteroid or dust from an extinct comet.' After last months Leonid Shower, I won't miss this one!" Since I slept through the Leonids, I hope I don't miss this one, too.
... as this year is not expected to be any more spectacular for the Geminids than any other year, and compared to last month this will be positively underwhelming.
Seems to me that the only real draw is that we just had a very exciting shower so everyone is more aware of the meteor phenom. But as SpaceWeather points out, the expected maximum is only going to be around "100 or more" per hour.
In short, don't get your knickers in a knot. But if the Leonids woke you up to meteor showers, this will be a good intro to what you'll see in a typical shower.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
NASA has a great article about Geminid meteors. The number of meteors has increased greatly since first they first appeared in the mid-1800's. NASA also provides a video taken from a man in CA, December 13, 1998.
http://tomgould.com/
The Ursids are next.
They max out on December 22-23.
Is there something particularly interesting about something that happens pretty much every year? Why didn't Slashdot report them last year? And why only these last two?
Here's the schedule, by the way.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The annual Persied shower is one of the best showers of the year and the best summer shower. The peak is around Aug 12-13 with upwards to 80 or so meteors visible per hour from a dark sky site.
A good source of info for coming astronomical events is Sky and Telescope magazine. You can find online info from S&T here.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Ok, Some of the better pictures he got are now up on my website. You can see them at: http://www.matthoppes.org/meteors.
The "new" Kodak DX3900 has an adjustable shutter exposure up to 16 seconds. 16 seconds isn't enough to get shots like you linked to, but it should be enough to get a couple of objects in an intense shower.
Another reply suggested using photoshop to mesh multiple shots into one, and I tend to agree. I think that's about as good as you can hope for in a shower like this.
A lot of people hack QuickCams for astronomical images. I've mostly seen images of bright objects, though. If you could put the sensor behind a large-aperture wide-angle lens you might have luck with meteors.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery