by What could be the best meteor display of the year is just around the corner, scheduled to peak late Wednesday night / early Thursday morning, December 13-14: The Geminid Meteor shower.
If you were disappointed by the lackluster display of the Leonid meteor shower last month, don’t worry. The Geminid meteors tend to be the most rewarding annual showers, even surpassing the famous Perseids of August. Studies of past displays show that this shower is known for being rich in slow, bright, elegant meteors and fireballs as well as faint meteors, with fewer objects of medium brightness. Geminis are typically approaching Earth at 22 miles (35 km) per second; about half the speed of the Leonid meteor. Many are yellow in color. Some have even been seen creating rough or divided paths.
The Geminids get their name from the constellation Gemini, the Twins. On the maximum night of this shower – the meteors will appear from a spot in the sky near the bright star Castor in Gemini.
The Earth moves quickly through this meteor stream and creates a somewhat broad and erratic activity profile. Rates increase steadily for two to three days before the maximum rate, reaching about a quarter of their peak strength, then drop off more sharply thereafter. Late Geminids, however, tend to be particularly bright. Renegade’s predecessor may be visible for a week or more before maximum, but three nights after peak activity, the Geminids are all but gone for another year.
Related: Meteor Showers 2023: When will the next one be?
Excellent conditions in 2023
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The Geminids perform exceptionally well in any year, but 2023 can be categorized as a “great year.” Last year’s exhibition in contrast, it was greatly affected by the bright moonlight when a bright, bright moon rose over the sky during the late evening hours and washed out many of the fainter Geminid streaks with its bright light.
But this year, the moon will be at a new phase on December 12. At its nighttime peak, the moon will be a thin crescent, low in the west-southwest at dusk and setting around 5 pm on Wednesday evening. That means the sky will be dark and moonlit for the balance of the night, making for perfect viewing conditions for the shower.
According to Margearet Campbell-Brown and Peter Brown in the 2023 Observer Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the Geminids are predicted to reach peak activity at 2 pm EDT (1900 GMT). This means that those places from eastern Europe and north-east Africa east to the mid-latitudes of Russia and China are in the best position to catch the peak of the shower, where rates can be higher than 120 per times! But the maximum rates only continue at slightly reduced levels for about 6 to 10 times the maximum, so other places (like North America) should enjoy some fine Geminid activity as well.
In fact, under normal conditions on the night of maximum activity, with ideal dark sky conditions, at least 60 or more Geminid meteors can be expected to burst across the sky every hour on average (light pollution decreases to large numbers).
Best views after 10pm
Generally, depending on your location, Gemini begins to rise above the east-northeast sky around the time the evening is coming to an end. So, you might see a few early Geminis as soon as the sky gets dark. There is also a good chance of possibly seeing some “Earth-grazing” meteors. The stars of the earth are long, bright stars that stretch overhead from a point close to even just below the horizon. Such meteors are so distinctive because they follow long paths almost parallel to our atmosphere.
The Geminids begin to appear significantly more numerous in the hours after 10 pm local time, because the radiant shower is already quite high in the eastern sky by that time. The best views, however, come around 2 am, when their radiant point will almost pass overhead. The more radiant a shower, the more meteors it produces across the sky.
Hold up!
But keep this in mind: At this time of year, meteor watching can be a long, cold business. You wait and wait for meteors to appear. When they are not visible right away, and if you are cold and uncomfortable, you will not be looking for meteors for a long time!
A night in a sleeping bag under the stars in summer is an attractive proposition, and as a result, many holiday campers “discover” the August Perseids independently. But it’s a completely different story for the Geminids, who require lying on the ground or a long lawn chair in December for several hours after midnight, looking up at a clear sky that has provided cooling radiation and plumbing temperatures since sunset. .
The late Henry Neely (1879-1963), who was for many years a popular lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium in New York, had this to say about watching the Geminids: “Take the advice of a man who has his teeth talking about many people. winter night – wrapped much warmer than you think necessary.”
Hot cocoa or coffee can take the edge off the cell, as well as provide a little stimulation. It’s even better if you can watch with friends. That way, you can keep each other awake, as well as cover more sky. Give your eyes time to adjust to the dark before you start.
A progenitor is an asteroid
Geminids stand out from the other meteor showers in that they appear to have been spawned not by a comet, but by 3200 Phaëthon, an active Apollo asteroid crossing the Earth with an orbit that brings it closer to the sun than any other named asteroid. For this reason, it was named after the Greek myth Phaëthon, son of the sun god Helios.
Then again, the Geminis may be comet debris after all, as some astronomers believe that Phaëthon is the dead nucleus of a burnt-out comet that was somehow caught in an unusually tight orbit.
If you want to try your hand at photographing the Geminids or any other meteor shower, be sure to check out our guide on how to photograph meteors and meteor showers. And if you need imaging gear, consider our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography.
Note to the editor: If you take a great photo of the Geminid Meteor shower that you’d like to share with Space.com and our news partners for a story or image gallery, send images and comments to spacephotos@space.com.
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Free natural history magazine,the The Farmers’ Almanac and other publications.
