Tag: asteroid

Meteors

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If it’s clear tonight you might catch the end of the gemini meteor shower! There might be up to 100 meteors (shooting stars) an hour. They are grains of dust the size of a grain of sand burning up in the atmosphere. Bigger pieces can appear as fireballs. They are the remains of dust particles from a comet or asteroid. The Geminids are named after the sign of the zodiac they seem to come from. Gemini (the stars are castor and pollux). Bigger pieces that land are known as meteorites and can be worth a lot of money.

From Google :

Meteor showers tend to be associated with a particular space body; in the case of the Geminids, the source is an asteroid or space rock known as 3200 Phaethon. Every December, Earth runs into the stream of debris the asteroid leaves behind, bringing a new wave of crumbs into our atmosphere that shine as shooting stars.

So if you look out tonight I hope you see the shooting stars x

Clear sky

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It’s a clear sky tonight, the clocks go forward in the UK today. I would love to see the Aurora Borealis which has been visible in lower latitudes over the last few nights, while it has stayed stubbornly cloudy here. The information about Auroral displays and asteroids etcetera you could check out a website called https://spaceweather.com

There is also a large asteroid passing between the Earth and the Moon tonight, but as that distance is around 250,000 miles and it’s about 264 meters across there’s no danger. I guess with a clear sky astronomers will be able to watch it.

I always watch the BBC programme ‘The Sky at Night’ every month when it’s on. But they seem to have stopped showing it. More dumbing down? How do you find out information if its not shared.