Fireball from 5000 Meters High
A fireball (very bright meteor) appears above laguna Cotacotani in Andes mountains as seen from altitude of 5050 meters in Chilean Altiplano near the border of Bolivia. — Stephane Guisard
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“This is a composite of all the Geminid meteors captured over Pendleton, Oregon on the evening of December 13, 2012. I took these from Emigrant Hill. In the valley below, you can see the light “footprint” of Pendleton, Mission, the Wildhorse Casino, and several other smaller towns. Fog has enveloped most of the cities below.” — Thomas W. Earle
Geminid Meteor Shower 2012 from Mt. Hehuan, Taiwan by 星天日和
When Gemini Sends Stars to Paranal
From a radiant point in the constellation of the Twins, the annual Geminid meteor shower rained down on planet Earth this week.
Image Credit & Copyright: Stéphane Guisard (Los Cielos de America), TWAN
Recorded near the shower’s peak in the early hours of December 14, this skyscape captures Gemini’s lovely shooting stars in a careful composite of 30 exposures, each 20 seconds long, from the dark of the Chilean Atacama Desert over ESO’s Paranal Observatory. In the foreground Paranal’s four Very Large Telescopes, four Auxillary Telescopes, and the VLT Survey telescope are all open and observing.
The skies above are shared with bright Jupiter (left), Orion, (top left), and the faint light of the Milky Way. Dust swept up from the orbit of active asteroid 3200 Phaethon, Gemini’s meteors enter the atmosphere traveling at about 22 kilometers per second.
A Geminid meteor over Tandis valley, Persian gulf, Iran. — photo by Amirreza Kamkar
Geminid Meteor Shower and Meteorwatch
The Geminid Meteor Shower is the grand finale of astronomical events in 2012 and is usually the most reliable and prolific of the annual meteor showers.
This year we are in for a special treat as the Moon will be absent when the Geminids are at their peak on the evening of the 12th/ 13th of December. This means that the sky should be at its darkest when the shower is expected, and many more of the fainter meteors may be seen.
The Geminid meteor shower is expected to yield in excess of 50 meteors (shooting stars) per hour at peak for those with clear skies, the meteors it produces are usually bright with long persistent trains. If observing opportunities aren’t favorable or possible on the 12th/ 13th, meteor watchers can usually see high meteor activity a day or so either side of the peak.
As well as being the grand finale of 2012, the Geminids are special in another way. Unlike the majority of all the other annual meteor showers the Geminids are thought to be from an object known as 3200 Phaethon – an asteroid not a comet.
To celebrate this long anticipated event, there will be the Geminid Meteorwatch and anyone with an interest in the night sky can join in on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. The event will be an excellent opportunity to learn, share information, experiences, images and more. Whatever your level of interest, wherever you are on the planet Meteorwatch will run for approximately four days. All you need to do is follow along using the #meteorwatch hashtag.
As well as the wealth of information exchanged and shared on Twitter and the other social media outlets, there are helpful guides and information available on Meteorwatch.org so you can get the most out of your #meteorwatch.
To get the ball rolling there is a Hollywood style trailer for the event, purely as a bit of fun and for people of all walks of life to feel inspired and to go outside and look up. You don’t need a telescope or anything, just your eyes and a little bit of patience to see a Geminid meteor.
Geminid Meteor Shower Coming on December 13–14 2012
If it’s clear late Thursday night, December 13th, 2012, keep a lookout high overhead for the shooting stars of the Geminid meteor shower. “The Geminids are usually one of the two best meteor showers of the year,” says Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky & Telescope magazine. “They may beat out the Perseids of August.” This year’s showing has the added benefit of reduced celestial competition — thanks to the new Moon, no moonlight will interfere with meteor counting.
Under a clear, dark sky, you may see a shooting star every minute from 10 p.m. local time Thursday until dawn Friday morning. If you live under the artificial skyglow of light pollution the numbers will be less, but the brightest meteors will still shine through.
Lower counts of Geminid meteors should be visible earlier that evening, and a few should also flash into view on the nights of December 11, 12, and 14.
To watch for meteors, you need no equipment other than your eyes. Find a dark spot with an open view of the sky and no glaring lights nearby. Bundle up as warmly as you can in many layers. “Go out late in the evening, lie back, and gaze up into the stars,” says Sky & Telescope editor in chief Robert Naeye. “Relax, be patient, and let your eyes adapt to the dark. The best direction to watch is wherever your sky is darkest, probably straight up.”
Geminids can appear anywhere in the sky. Small ones appear as tiny, quick streaks. Occasional brighter ones may sail across the heavens for several seconds and leave a brief train of glowing smoke.
If you trace each meteor’s direction of flight backward far enough across the sky, you’ll find that this imaginary line crosses a spot in the constellation Gemini near the stars Castor and Pollux. Gemini is in the eastern sky during evening and high overhead in the hours after midnight (for skywatchers at north temperate latitudes). This special spot is called the shower’s radiant. It’s the perspective point from which all the Geminids would appear to come if you could see them approaching from the far distance, rather than just in the last second or so of their lives as they dive into Earth’s upper atmosphere.
A cosmic grain of sand left the long and colorful trail across this all-sky view. Its grazing impact with planet Earth’s atmosphere began at 71 kilometers per second.
Image Credit & Copyright: Stéphane Vetter (Nuits sacrees)
With the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon, the scene was captured on the night of November 17 from the astronomically popular high plateau at Champ du Feu in Alsace, France. Of course, the earthgrazer meteor belongs to this month’s Leonid meteor shower, produced as our fair planet annually sweeps through dust from the tail of periodic Comet Tempel-Tuttle.
The shower’s radiant point in the constellation Leo is very close to the eastern horizon, near the start of the trail at the lower left. Bright planet Jupiter is also easy to spot, immersed in a faint band of Zodiacal light just below and right of center. The image is part of a dramatic time-lapse video (vimeo here) that began only 7 minutes before the long leonid crossed the sky.
What would happen if an meteor or asteroid the size of ______________, made of ______________, hit Earth at a speed of ______________?
There’s a web app for that. Check out Purdue’s Impact: Earth!
Have fun destroying the planet!!! (And learning about asteroid impacts of various sizes and energies, of course)
Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks This Week
One of the best of the annual meteor displays will be reaching its peak this week — the annual Leonid meteor shower.
While the Leonid meteor shower has a history of putting on stupendous displays, this year will not be one of them; at best 10 to 15 meteors per hour may be seen. This year is a bit unusual in that the Leonids are expected to show two peaks of activity, one on Saturday morning (Nov. 17) and another on Tuesday morning (Nov. 20).
In the public mind the term “meteor shower” conjures up a vision of shooting stars streaming through the heavens like rain. Such meteor storms have indeed occurred, when tens of thousands of meteors per hour flare into view. But most showers are a thousand times weaker.
Watching one consists of lying back, gazing up into the stars, and waiting. A very good shower will produce about one meteor per minute for a given observer under a dark country sky. Any light pollution or moonlight can reduce the count considerably.
This year the moon will not be a problem for the Leonid meteor shower. It will set well before the constellation Leo, where the meteors appear to radiate out from, climbs high into the sky.
Aurora & Orionid over Abisko National Park, North Sweden by Carmen Sánchez García
