Mid-evening ‘til dawn on the 13th-14th is the best time to view December’s Geminid meteor shower, an annual finalist for ‘Best of the Year’. Geminids are white and multicoloured and bright and fast (130,000kmph/80,000mph), and recent showers have given us rates of 120 per hour at the peak. They will flare into life anywhere in the sky, but appear to originate from the constellation Gemini (The Twins) which rises at sunset in the east, and can be found high in the southern sky at 2am.
Unfortunately, as has been the case for a lot of meteor showers this year, the peak of the shower coincides with the Full Moon which will also be found in Gemini. Things could be worse, however. First, the Geminids can be really bright, so some are sure to show up anyway. Secondly, a shower’s radiant (the point meteors appear to come from) is seldom the best direction to look; this is because the radiant is the point where the meteor first strikes the atmosphere, and it takes a few seconds for the rock to warm up to melting temperature. So, facing anywhere other than in the direction of the Moon should work.
One other thing to watch for, especially low in the east early in the evening, is an ‘earthgrazer’, a slow bright meteor moving roughly parallel to the horizon. Earthgrazing meteors are normal meteors that enter our atmosphere at an extremely shallow angle, sometimes passing through and leaving again, or simply bouncing off. There’s no guarantee you will see one, but if you do, you’ll know.
One reason the Geminids are dependable is that the dust stream from which they come is frequently replenished. Every 1.43 years, the asteroid 3200 Phaeton whips by and sheds scads of fresh dust and debris for the Earth to run into each December. Phaeton is a small little mysterious rocky thing only 5 kilometers in diameter, and the only non-comet to have a meteor shower associated with it. While you’re out there anyway, brilliant Venus hangs in the south west until it sets at 8pm, and bright Mars is prominent in the south until it too disappears at 10. There’s another object, roughly half the brightness of Mars, below and to the east of it about 10 degrees. Hanging in an area devoid of much else, you will find ‘The Loneliest Star’, Fomalhaut. Reasonably bright and quite close (25 light years), Fomalhaut’s claim to fame is that in 2008, it was the first star to have a planet, since named ‘Dagon’, show up on a photograph. Chances are you’re not spending as much time in your back yard as you were even a week ago, but it’s usually worth bundling up and catching a few Geminids before calling it a year.
Make sure you wave; there’s always a chance someone on Dagon is looking back.
