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Best Meteor Shower This Year

Posted by kdawson on from the must-use-Enlightenment-topic dept.

LittleRedStar writes "This Wednesday night and Thursday morning is the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. This is the typically the best meteor show of the year with up to 100 meteors per hour. This year the moon is a nuisance, but with the peak predicted for early Thursday morning it is worth getting out and watching. Since the Perseid meteor shower was washed out from the moon and the Leonids were a bust, this should be the best for 2006."

11 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Almost extinct comet? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Insightful
    If 3200 Phaethon is truly an asteroid, with no tail, how did it produce the Geminids? "Maybe it bumped up against another asteroid," offers Cooke. "A collision could have created a cloud of dust and rock that follows Phaethon around in its orbit."

    OK but what if 3200 Phaethon occasionally has outbursts when it is closest to the sun. Doing that will blow a lot of rock off the surface and create meteor showers, it can also change the orbit.

    Space probes try to perform trajectory changes when deep in a gravitational field because coupling with a large mass actually helps you get more velocity change from a given impulse.

    Its not going to be fun for us of this object changes course one day and collides with the Earth.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:Almost extinct comet? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Informative
      How do you work that out? Impulse = integral (F .dt) = change of momentum, momentum = mass * velocity. Seems the same impulse gives the same velocity change, if the mass remains constant.

      Think about it this way: you are the Cassini probe transiting Jupiter on your way to Saturn. Approaching Jupiter its gravity sucks you in, increasing your speed. You do a burn at closest approach and increase your speed further. As a result you spend less time inside Jupiters gravitational field on your way out, so you lose less speed than you gained on your way in.

      The effect works the other way as well. Your own gravitational field pulls Jupiter a bit towards you as you approach and the tug in the other direction is slightly smaller (because of your greater speed) after the flyby. The result is that Cassini and Jupiter exchange a small amount of momentum.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    2. Re:Almost extinct comet? by Nuffsaid · · Score: 3, Funny

      Are they doing THAT? Are they CRAZY?!? Shifting Jupiter from its orbit? We are here busy worrying about asteroid impacts, and when you least expect it a gas giant hurls unstoppably toward our small planet, only because years before NASA was too cheap to buy enough fuel for its probes! They must be stopped NOW! To every celestial body its own momentum, I say.

      --
      Nuffsaid
      ________

      Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
    3. Re:Almost extinct comet? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Informative
      Shifting Jupiter from its orbit?

      I think the total velocity change from all our space probes was calculated to be about 1 foot per million years, or thereabouts.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    4. Re:Almost extinct comet? by jrockway · · Score: 3, Funny
      I think the total velocity change from all our space probes was calculated to be about 1 foot per million years, or thereabouts.


      Unacceptable! Won't someone please think of our children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children's children?
      --
      My other car is first.
  2. Re:To be honest... by Bastard+of+Subhumani · · Score: 3, Funny

    Golden showers don't cleanse.

    --
    Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
  3. yay! by oedneil · · Score: 4, Funny

    We can all sit on blankets with our girlfriends and hold hands while we watch this.. oh wait..

    1. Re:yay! by RuBLed · · Score: 5, Funny

      replace girlfrieds with Wii; replace hands with WiiMote..

      there almost perfect...

  4. Leonids may have been a bust by ballpoint · · Score: 2, Interesting

    in terms of intensity; I saw only 4 common very faint streaks in 20 minutes.

    However, I also was treated to a rare one that looked like a piece of shrapnel from fireworks coming down. That made it all worthwhile, certainly taking into account the unusually pleasant viewing conditions for a November night.

    --
    Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
  5. Re:To be honest... by fatphil · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Urine is sterile though. Cut your hand on a rusty nail in a fence-post? You're better off washing the wound immediately with urine and then binding it than you are waiting 20 minutes before you get home and using some fancy schmancy medi-kit stuff.

    However, I suspect the usage previously is intended to make one feel 'dirty'.

    --
    Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
  6. Another excellent prediction by jfengel · · Score: 2, Funny

    I knew that there was a meteor shower tonight as soon as I got up this morning, because it was cloudy and raining after several days of clear skies. Here in the DC area that's an infallible predictor of an astronomical event.