Best Meteor Shower This Year

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."

Comments

Almost extinct comet?

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Re:Almost extinct comet?

[MichaelSmith]

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.

Re:Almost extinct comet?

[Nuffsaid]

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.

Re:Almost extinct comet?

[jrockway]

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?

Re:To be honest...

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Golden showers don't cleanse.

yay!

[oedneil]

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

Re:yay!

[RuBLed]

replace girlfrieds with Wii; replace hands with WiiMote..

there almost perfect...