The Gemini meteor caught on in its final, flammable moments.
NASA
The 2020 Geminid meteor shower has officially passed its prime, but impressive performances still await those skydivers who venture out Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
The official peaks of the Geminids arrived early Monday night, and they certainly delivered lots of stars and a few bright, slow firebas from my frigid, dark-sky location in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. But the ideal position of the new moon continues from Monday night and Tuesday morning and there should still be plenty of meteor activity to see it.
This Be firm Meteor showers attract a lot of attention because they are active during summer nights in the Northern Hemisphere, but geminids are actually present most of the year.
Even better, this is one of the few big meteor showers that you can do to catch the best part. Don’t demand to wake up well before. According to the American Meteorological Society (AMS), Gemini “provides good activity before midnight because the Gemini constellation is well held from 22:00.”
This literally means that the boils that appear to be coming out of the celestial sphere are placed in the early night sky. It will be around 2 a.m. local time, but going ahead before midnight will give you a good chance to see plenty. Also, those moments are the best time to watch bright, slow-moving “earth grazers” along the horizon.
“I prefer to go south and glide west from my point of view, so I can also observe a small shower that is active in the same region of the sky,” says Robert Lansford of AMS.
Bottom line: There is no real time to see Geminids. Also, you don’t is needed Looking at Gemini to see Gemini. Meteors can appear anywhere in the night sky, but they will continue to rotate normally Away From Gemini.
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If you can manage that, you just need to dress appropriately, put back, let your eyes adjust, relax and look. Geminids can range from fuzzy, ephemeral “shooting stars” to bright, intensely colored streaks and perhaps fireballs here and there. You will have more difficulty seeing meteors in the Northern Hemisphere, but Geminids also appear south of the equator, after night and in small numbers.
We do meteor showers when the Earth passes through clouds of debris, usually left behind by comets. In the case of Geminids, the debris comes from a so-called “rock comet” 3200 Fathon, Which is thought to be a potentially extinct comet orbiting the inner solar system.
