Tag: Meteorites

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

Geminids

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We (the Earth) is heading towards a stream of bits of rock from a comet called 3200 Phaethon. This is what  causes the annual Geminid meteor shower. It is expect to peak on December the 13th and 14th. The night before is the full Moon. But the Geminids are bright and can have brilliant fireballs during the shower so they may be visible even through the moonlight. The main problem in the UK is that its often too cloudy to see things like meteor showers. I’ve often stood outside and looked for meteors, but seen nothing.on one occasion long ago we drove off into the night to see if we could get out from underneath the cloud. We drove from Stoke to Buxton and Macclesfield, but to no avail. Apparently they had a good show in Liverpool that night. But we missed it.

Meteor showers can appear at all times of the day, but are best viewed at night. As the Eath turns different bits of it can be pointing into the comet debris at different times of day. Generally they are more visible after local midnight, but one part of the world may see nothing and another part several meteors a minute. It can also be dependent on the width or narrowness of the dust stream.

Happy viewing, wrap up warm!