Those who want to get rid of a Christmas wish quickly will soon have the chance: the annual meteor shower of the Geminids is coming. The pre-Christmas spectacle peaks in mid-December with up to 150 shooting stars per hour.
The Geminids peak on December 14 around 2 p.m. For those interested in Central Europe, the nights before and after are therefore ideal for observation. According to the House of Astronomy in Heidelberg, 30 to 60 meteors can be seen especially on the night of December 14-15, depending on how bright the night sky is. Every minute or two a shooting star shoots across the sky. Since the waning crescent will rise around 9 or 10 p.m. on those days, the evening hours are ideal for observation.
Experience has shown that the swarm, named after the constellation Gemini – Latin twins – also produces many bright shooting stars. Dark spots away from the light-flooded cities are best for observing the pre-Christmas sky racers, but the brightest Geminids can also be seen in the city sky. If you want to photograph the meteor shower, mount a camera with a wide-angle lens on a tripod and choose a slow shutter speed.
Although they are among the largest swarms of shooting stars of the year, the Geminids are usually overshadowed by the much more famous Perseids, which light up the August sky each year. The fact that the Geminids are less popular is mainly due to the time of year in which they appear: the cold and often cloudy December weather offers shooting star hunters less comfortable observing conditions than the mild Perseid nights in summer.
When the Geminid Swarm was named, the constellation Gemini with its bright main stars Castor and Pollux was the inspiration, as the shooting stars seem to fall from exactly this direction. Astronomers call the apparent common starting point of the meteor orbits the radiant – the Geminids’ radiant is therefore in Gemini.
In reality, snuff comes from a cloud of dust that passes through our Earth around the same time every year. The dust particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere where they then produce the luminous phenomena known as shooting stars.
In the Geminids, however, the origin of this dust cloud is unusual. Usually, meteor showers are caused by small remnants of comets – tail stars that, as they approach the hot sun, release dust that then scatters across the comet’s orbit. For example, the origin of the Perseids lies in the cosmic dust trail of the comet “Swift-Tuttle”, which visits the sun approximately every 130 years. The Geminid dust cloud is different: it does not come from a comet, but clearly goes back to a small asteroid – ie a fairly solid little body of our solar system.
The Geminids have other quirks. The stream’s meteors move across the sky relatively slowly. The reason is the slow speed at which the Geminid particles enter the atmosphere. It is “only” 122,000 kilometers per hour – in the case of the Perseids, on the other hand, it is 212,000 kilometers per hour.
Another peculiarity of the Geminids is that in the hours of the shooting star maximum the fainter and only later the brightest meteors light up. (sda/afp)
Source: Blick
I am Ross William, a passionate and experienced news writer with more than four years of experience in the writing industry. I have been working as an author for 24 Instant News Reporters covering the Trending section. With a keen eye for detail, I am able to find stories that capture people’s interest and help them stay informed.
