11:00 AM | *Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight and tomorrow night and skies should cooperate*
Paul Dorian
Geminids over the Czech Republic in 2018. Credit: Petr Horálek, spaceweather.com
Overview
The Geminid meteor shower is visible from mid-November through Christmas, but it typically peaks in mid-December and the best two nights for viewing should be tonight and tomorrow night. The Geminids first became visible from Earth in the mid-1800s and the meteor shower has increased in visibility since then. The Geminids are bright and tend to be yellow in color and are fast movers with a velocity of 22 miles per second. Sky conditions should be quite favorable both tonight and tomorrow night in the Mid-Atlantic region with generally clear skies (albeit quite cold) potentially resulting in more than a hundred meteors visible per hour if based in dark locations.
An artist's concept of “3200 Phaethon” spewing sodium gas (Credit spaceweather.com)
Details
As meteor showers go, the Geminids are relative newcomers. According to spaceweather.com, they first appeared in the mid-1800’s when an unknown stream of debris crossed earth’s orbit. Astronomers in the 19th century viewed the sky for the parent comet, but found nothing and the search continued for more than 100 years. In 1983, NASA’s Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) found an object now called “3200 Phaethon” that was considered to be indeed the source of the Geminids as its orbit was virtually the same to that of the Geminid debris stream.
The puzzling finding was that “3200 Phaethon” appeared to be a rocky asteroid which are not typically sources of meteor showers as they don’t have tails and don’t spew meteoroids. In fact, this finding would make the Geminids, together with the Quadrantids, the only major meteor showers not originating from a comet. In 2009 and 2012, NASA’s STEREO spacecraft captured “3200 Phaethon” sprouting a tail when it passed close to the sun. Apparently, intense solar radiation was indeed blistering meteoroids off the rocky surface and since that discovery “3200 Phaethon” has been dubbed by many as a “rock comet”.
Other astronomers are not quite convinced, however, suggesting that the tail is simply too small to produce the Geminid meteors so the mystery will go on for at least a few more years. The best way to find out for sure about “3200 Phaethon” is to look at the surface with a space probe and Japan is planning to do just that. JAXA is building a spacecraft called “DESTINY+” to fly by “3200 Phaethon” for a closer look with launch scheduled for 2025.
Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Arcfield
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