Thursday, December 13, 2007

Tonight the Geminids

Tonight is the Geminid meteor shower, and it's supposed to be a good one:

The Geminid Meteors are usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers, even surpassing the
famous Perseids of August.

Studies of past find the "Gems" have a reputation for being rich both in slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs as well as faint meteors, with relatively fewer objects of medium brightness.

Generally speaking, depending on your location, Gemini begins to come up above the east-northeast horizon right around the time evening twilight is coming to an end. So you might catch sight of a few early Geminids as soon as the sky gets dark.

There is a fair chance of perhaps catching sight of some "Earth-grazing" meteors. Earth grazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from a point near to even just below the horizon. Such meteors are so distinctive because they follow long paths nearly parallel to our atmosphere.

The Geminids begin to appear noticeably more numerous in the hours after 10 p.m. local time, because the shower's radiant is already fairly high in the eastern sky by then. The best views, however, come around 2 a.m., when their radiant point will be passing very nearly overhead.


While I plan to go outside and watch some of it, tonight's forcast is for it to be 12 degrees. So I doubt that I'll stay out very long.
Added: Went out, saw a few, got cold, went back inside. Yeah, I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to cold.

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