The best chance to see the strongest meteor shower of the year happens this week. The Geminids, known for bright, intensely colored meteors, have been streaking across the night sky since late November, and rain will peak on Tuesday night, Dec. 13-14, according to the American Meteor Society.
“If you had to define one (meteor shower) as the best of the year, it would be the Geminids”, said Robert Lunsford, of the society. “Typically, from a suburban area, under good conditions, you could probably see 30 to 40 meteors (in an hour).”
With clear skies and no bright lights in the way, Geminids can have a rate of about 120 visible meteors per hour, according to NASA. However, there’s no escaping the big beacon in the sky that will hide most of the fainter meteors this year: the moon will be shining at 72% fullness, according to the American Meteor Society.
“It’s still going to be good rain, even with the moon,” said Bill Cooke, head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “Find a decently dark sky, find something that blocks the moon, maybe a building or a tree, and look away from the moon to the sky.”
The growth of the Geminids
First observed in the mid-1800s, the shower initially had only 20 meteors visible per hour at most. Since then, the Geminids have reappeared each year, growing stronger in numbers. In the 1960s, the event surpassed the substantial Perseids of August, which was once the heaviest shower ever, with rates of 50 to 100 visible meteors per hour.
It’s unclear how the Geminids might change in the near future, Cooke said, with some models indicating that rainfall will increase in intensity and others estimating a gradual decline over the coming decades.
The Geminids is unique because its source is asteroid 3200 Phaethon, while most other meteor showers are born from icy cometary debris. That’s why Geminid outflow can be unpredictable — because it’s harder to model asteroid breakups, Cooke said.
Asteroid 3200 Phaethon is unusual in its own right, behaving like a comet as it approaches the sun. It also has an orbit, which completes one revolution every 1.4 years or so, that is closer to the sun than any other asteroid. When 3200 Phaethon is close to Earth, the asteroid sheds its dusty debris, hence the Geminid display.
How to see the meteor shower
Geminids will be happening from Nov. 19 to Dec. 24, according to EarthSky, but its hourly meteor rates start hitting double digits after Dec. 10, Lunsford said.
The Geminids will be visible from all parts of the world, but for the Southern Hemisphere, it is best seen in the middle of the night, around 2 am.
According to data from NASA’s meteor camera, the Geminids shower is among the best for producing fireballs, meteors that are brighter than the planet Venus, second only to the Perseids, Cooke said. The biggest and brightest meteors tend to have a greenish color.
Illumination from the moon has affected observation of the Geminids for the last couple of years, but the meteor shower is expected to occur during a new moon in 2023, creating perfect viewing conditions.
“When you see a meteor burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, you’re seeing something that’s been in space for a long time,” Cooke said. “From a scientific point of view, by studying it, we can learn something about what makes up these comets. To the casual observer, they are beautiful fireworks – meteor showers are nature’s fireworks.”
The next and final major annual meteor shower of 2022 will be the Ursids, peaking on the night of Dec. 22, according to EarthSky.
Source: CNN Brasil
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