There are a lot of predictions from different people, who all agree pretty much on one point: the best chances for increased activity is around 4:45 GMT on the 19th, maybe a little later (up to 6:30 GMT). That's the 'easy' part...
The hard part is to predict how many meteors there will be. The more optimistic predictions say something like 2 per minute at the time of the maximum. Still a pretty good show I'd say...
The sad news is that most of the meteors are expected to be rather faint. No big fireball show like in 1998 this time... Luckily it's near new moon, so that sometimes annoyingly bright thing won't bother us this year, but still you should find a dark spot as far away as possible from bright light sources (street lights, cities,...)
Conclusion: it's nothing like the magnificient outbursts we had between 1998 and 2002 (which sometimes had thousands of meteors per hour), but it's still a good chance to see some meteors.
Hints for observing and reporting
on
Geminid Meteor Shower
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The International Meteor Organization has some guidelines online for reporting your observations of the Geminids. Take a look at
http://www.imo.net/news/news.html#geminids2004
Good luck...
Luc
If there's one night in the next few decades to watch for meteors, it's definitely this one.
I agree that you can't be 100% sure, but all predication models show high peaks at the same times. Only the expected amounts (ZHR) differs. Predictions for 1999 with less solid models proved to be less than 5 minutes wrong in time. I wouldn't call that inaccurate...
Some suggestions:
- Peaks are quite sharp. Only a couple of hours around the peak get very high activity.
- Three expected peaks: one perfect for America (11/18 10h01 UT), two others best in eastern Asia (11/18 17h31 UT and 18h19 UT).
- Observations before midnight local time don't make too much sense since you're on the wrong side of the earth.
- Of course usual astronomical hint: dark area...
Anyway, I'll be travelling from Belgium to China for the event...
Slashdot Mirror
There are a lot of predictions from different people, who all agree pretty much on one point: the best chances for increased activity is around 4:45 GMT on the 19th, maybe a little later (up to 6:30 GMT). That's the 'easy' part...
The hard part is to predict how many meteors there will be. The more optimistic predictions say something like 2 per minute at the time of the maximum. Still a pretty good show I'd say...
The sad news is that most of the meteors are expected to be rather faint. No big fireball show like in 1998 this time... Luckily it's near new moon, so that sometimes annoyingly bright thing won't bother us this year, but still you should find a dark spot as far away as possible from bright light sources (street lights, cities, ...)
Btw, the International Meteor Organization collects observation reports. Check http://www.imo.net/visual for an explanation of the observation method and http://www.imo.net/visual/report/electronic for the report form.
Conclusion: it's nothing like the magnificient outbursts we had between 1998 and 2002 (which sometimes had thousands of meteors per hour), but it's still a good chance to see some meteors.
The International Meteor Organization has some guidelines online for reporting your observations of the Geminids. Take a look at http://www.imo.net/news/news.html#geminids2004 Good luck... Luc
If there's one night in the next few decades to watch for meteors, it's definitely this one. I agree that you can't be 100% sure, but all predication models show high peaks at the same times. Only the expected amounts (ZHR) differs. Predictions for 1999 with less solid models proved to be less than 5 minutes wrong in time. I wouldn't call that inaccurate... Some suggestions: - Peaks are quite sharp. Only a couple of hours around the peak get very high activity. - Three expected peaks: one perfect for America (11/18 10h01 UT), two others best in eastern Asia (11/18 17h31 UT and 18h19 UT). - Observations before midnight local time don't make too much sense since you're on the wrong side of the earth. - Of course usual astronomical hint: dark area... Anyway, I'll be travelling from Belgium to China for the event...