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Geminid Meteor Shower
Target Practice writes "Is it an asteroid? Is it a comet? Who cares? According to Sky and Telescope's website, 3200 Phaethon has been spewing chunks into our atmosphere for the past 150 years, and tonight, after the lan party, you can step outside at two or three A.M. and see the best light show yet - topping off at 75 meteors per hour! Be there..." Space.com has another story.
Is it just my growing awareness, or have there been more meteor showers over the past few years then there normaly is?
yeah, 75 per hour. right, like i'll fall for that again! i was the shmuck standing around at 5am for the leonids only to see maybe 10.
find some other chump.
Go read some bible: nubible.com
It's SNOWING where I am, you insensitive clod!
Maybe the meteor shower will bring an earlier end to DirecTV Internet...
No meteors in the Bay area.
San Francisco and friends are getting 6-12 inches of rain this weekend. Or several feet of snow if you're in the mountains. Might be a better time to go skiing or snowboarding.
The Geminids were pretty good, last year, though.
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I'm no astronomer, but isnt it interesting in the least that the orbit is so close to earths with such a similiar length in orbit? Should not the trajectory/composition/dating be studied for maybe relevance in say, the formation of the moon or other interesting local phenomena?
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
One thing better than the Leonids last month: The moon will be only 70% full tonight, and it'll set earlier.
The bad thing is, it's not as spectacular a show as the Leonids, all things being equal.
As to "are there more of these?" Nope. We have had a few spectacular shows in the past few years but nothing statistically unusual or anything more then wider reporting and slightly more accurate predictions.
Usual tips apply: Get out of the city, away from parking-lot lights, hills help block glare, let your eyes adjust, remember that a clear sky is COLD, binoculars are useless for this but entertaining for looking at other things like nebula and Jupiter's moons, look up online for tips regarding astrophotography and no your camera flash won't help...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Two or three AM? What kind of wimpy LAN parties do you have?
According to the Article Peak activity is projected around 4 a.m. EST (1 a.m. PST) with ideal dark-sky conditions, at least 60 to 120 Geminid meteors can be expected to burst across the sky every hour. They will be hitting Earth's Atmosphere at 22 miles per minute.. Insane..
Actually, there have been more meteor showers lately. This is obviously the beginning of an attack by the dread meteoric weapons of the planet Zarquon. Of course, now that you've found them out, they'll have to come up with some other ploy...
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Do not be tempted, young skywatcher, by the fact that your northern location provides almost twelve hours of darkness. This is foolishness, and a chasing after the wind.
Heed my warning! Else you too will spend two-and-a-half hours each way driving out past the mountain range in hopes of the 'continental divide' effect providing clearer skies than the rest of the west coast. This too is foolishness, and a chasing after the wind.
Seattlites, do not be fooled by such tools of deception like "sky reports", "radar images", "high pressure areas", and "friends calling who are near there"!
Sky reports are a fabrication of your enemy. Radar images and high pressure areas are fiction created by those who sell gasoline and coffee. Your friends are already in on the deception along with NASA. And they are at home in bed.
Stay home, young Washingtonian, and get some sleep. Lord knows it's dark enough.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
I used to go out regularly for showers, usually the Perseids. It's usually too cold for the Geminids.
/. headline.
But after last year's Leonids, where I got a 7,000/hour rate -- 2 per second for a sustained 15 minutes -- in Japan, it's hard to go out for the regular showers again, where even witha claimed rate of 75/hour you are likely to see fewer without the best conditions.
Pictures are here and here for 2002.
Even this year's show, which got up to 600/hour at the peak,and thus the 2nd best show in my experience, was a letdown.
Of course, I missed the 1966 show, being too young. Joe Haldeman saw it and told me it was like standing on the bridge of the Enterprise and watching the stars go by. He said for the first time he really could understand how he was standing on a planet moving in space.
But that was an estimated 70,000 per hour rate.
We won't see that again from the Leonids for about 97 years, if we see it then. It is possible another surprise show could come now that they are getting better at predicting, but I doubt it.
So yes, the past few years have shown an abundance of good shows. There was also a good Perseids show in the mid 90s, about 300/hour just after its comet went by. But the show is over for now, and I doubt the Geminids rate a
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I remember when the orange streetlamps started to be installed in the 70's. Before that, all streetlamps were of the bluish variety and gave very little light pollution. I have no idea why they all use orange ones now, I guess they are cheaper? I think the orange ones are called "sodium vapor."
I wish we could go back to blue, or at least redesign the orange ones so that they don't shine so much light into the sky. I remember as a kid looking up and seeing the milky way. Now I'm lucky if I manage to see Jupiter through the orange haze.
Three or four years ago, the head of the planetarium and observatory in Bradenton, FL was arrested while shooting out streetlamps near the observatory with a shotgun. I totally understand that guy. He was just fed up.
Conventional meteor showers come from comets, ice, and rock and material from them is jerked off when they approach the sun, creating those large tails trailing the objects and leaving clouds of gas and dust.
When the Earth plows through such debris patches, minuscule comet fragments burn up in the atmosphere and light up the nighttime sky.
An article I read on Netscape.com said, however, that "the Geminids are linked to 3200 Phaethon, an inner solar system object that lacks many qualities of comets in the neighborhood."
"3200 Phaethon doesn't sprout a tail when it comes close to the sun. It doesn't have a halo or a coma," is a quote from a NASA bulletin on these latest showers.
One other thing that people don't realize, though, is that weather does prohibit good viewing sometimes. It's winter in North America and many of us get snow or hail on an almost daily basis in December and January.
Maybe we could all post pictures of this as the event comes closer to starting. I'll probably have my brother in law out in Phoenix point the Web cam out the window to see if I can't catch a glimpse of some of this latest Geminid shower.
The Geminids are the workhorse of meteor showers. They appear year after year, not spectacular, but guaranteed. The Earth passes through a large cloud of debris, and meteors are visible each night for over a week. The density of the meteoroids left over by the astreoid is greater than the cometary debris of usual meteor showers. Therefore, the meteors are very bright and sometimes very colourful. Go see them and enjoy.
Veni, vidi, vici.