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.

Comments

Not sure what the fuss is...

[Goldenhawk]

... 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.

NASA website posts Geminid meteor info

[swimfastom]

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.

Don't worry if you miss this one.

[fireboy1919]

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.

Oh no! Why not in the summer?

[NickV]

We had a great view of the leonids here inIthaca (and people made fun of me for going to school in the middle of nowhere... HA!.. ok, maybe not)

But, where are the summer meteor showers? The last one had me standing out in the middle of a field at 5am, something I was uncomfortable enough doing because I was waiting for some cow to mug me (city mentality, I know), but it was also freezing. Now in December? I'll probably cease to exist if I'm out that late in the December in Ithaca. I better not tell my roommates or they'll drag me out again.

Anyone noticed if there are any summer showers?

Photographing Meteors

[IgnorantKnucklehead]

After the recent Leonid meteor showers my interest in astronomy became rekindled and I took the old telescope out of the closet and started pointing it at various things in the sky. Then, I wanted to take some pictures of what I saw so I took apart by webcam and attached it to the telescope in place of the eyepiece. Voila! It worked and I got some great pictures of the moon and some rather blurry shots of Jupiter and a few of it's moons.

Recently I've seen a few pages like this one. That describe how to take pictures of meteor showers with a 35mm camera (by exposing the film for extended periods of time). Is there any way to extend the exposure time like this with a digital camera? Any objects that are dimmer than a planet or a moon don't seem to show up.

I'd really like to set something up to get some shots of the Geminids by aiming the scope at a piece of sky and waiting for one to pass in front of it (or set it up to take repeated timed exposures). Is any of this possible with a Creative Video Blaster Webcam? Or should I fall back to the 35mm camera?

Re:Photographing Meteors

[honkycat]

probably not easily with your average digicam...

What you could try, though, is taking a number of photos without moving the camera (obviously, you'll need a tripod and ideally a cable release). Then, afterwards, use photoshop or the gimp and add channels from the multiple exposures. This should have the same effect as a single longer exposure. For best results, store images as uncompressed to avoid interference from compression artifacts.

I haven't tried this but it ought to work. You may have to adjust levels after summing to keep your blacks black. Also, if the photos are not in rapid succession, expect the star trails to turn into multiple distinct stars... Stars move surprisingly rapidly across the sky. It does not take a very long exposure before stars start trailing (visible on exposures shorter than a minute, actual effect depends on your focal length).

With a webcam, just try storing images for a long time and then averaging over different periods to see what you come up with.

This may not work at all depending on the low-light behavior of the ccd. You'll probably get nowhere near the performance as you would out of good old film, but it should be fun to try! I'd be interested to know how it works out.

Re:Nice

[matth]

Ok, Some of the better pictures he got are now up on my website. You can see them at: http://www.matthoppes.org/meteors.

Like Being a Kid

[Murdock037]

I don't like seeing all these "What's the point? It won't be as exciting as the Leonid" posts.

I went out for the Leonids last month and didn't quite see the cosmic fireworks that I'd prepared to expect, but it was still something that I'm entirely pleased I did.

I live in downtown Minneapolis, so stargazing is not a common pasttime in these parts. But I went out and sat down on my porch in my bathrobe and boxers at two-thirty in the morning, and just looked up for a half hour or so. I was lucky enough to not be blocked by clouds and I could situate myself so that no street-lights would kill my night vision.

It was magnificent. I saw five falling stars that night. It reminded me of standing in the middle of a field when I was younger in the northern Wisconsin woods-- at a certain point you stop thinking about the science of astronomy or really anything else, and you're just amazed at the vast dark-blue sky.

Is there much of anything out there that can give you that feeling, even now, when you're all grown up? I wish there was more.

If reading a post about a shower once a month on Slashdot will help me know when I can go sit on my porch again and get that feeling, I'm willing to put up with the repetition.