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Geminid Meteor Shower

Posted by michael on from the bring-an-umbrella dept.

zetes writes "Space.com has an article here about a meteor shower called the Geminids, which will occur Saturday night (December 13th). Around 9 PM 'from mid-northern latitutes' will be a great time to look - at about 10 PM the Moon will rise and spoil the show. Enjoy!"

3 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Detecting meteors with the radio by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems that one can detect meteors by radio. Meteors create transient ionized trails in the ionosphere that reflect radio waves that would not otherwise bounce of those ionosphere (HF and high-frequency shortwave signals). It even sem that there is software such as this tool for PC-based analysis of radio signals that can help one detect meteors and measure the intensity of the shower. Has anyone ever tried this?

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  2. Re:Telescope viewing? by OneOver137 · · Score: 5, Informative

    viewing meteors through a telescope is not recommended. the field of view is very small and a meteor shower is a whole-sky event. To watch a shower, find a comfortable place to lay or sit, and stare in the general direction of the radiant (in this case, the constellation Gemini). For this shower, the radiant is close an obvious yellow "star" called Saturn. Save your scope for stars,planets, or deep sky objects.

  3. Re:9pm? by mph · · Score: 4, Informative
    What time zone? ET?
    Uh, "local time" would be my guess. The moon rises at about the same local time whether you're in the ET or PT time zone. Likewise, if you're on the west coast, you'll be looking at about the same part of the sky at 9:00 PT as east coasters were seeing at 9:00 ET.