Mysterious Geminid meteor shower coming December 2010

William Atkins
Wednesday, 08 December 2010 00:07

Science - Space

The Geminid meteor shower will peak in 2010 on December 13th and 14th. Are you ready for around 120 to 140 meteors per hour? And, a mystery?

 

Named after the constellation Gemini, this meteor shower originates from 3200 Phaethon, a rocky asteroid that is thought by some astronomers to be what was left over after a comet lost most of its outer ice in its annual journey around the Sun.

3200 Phaethon has an orbit that brings it very close to the Sun - in fact, even closer than the planet Mercury. And, it looks like it would be a comet but it just doesn't exhibit any of the features common to comets, like a coma, gaseous jets, and a dust tail.

Astronomers think 32 Phaethon could be a comet that had almost all of its ice melted off by the Sun over its long and glorious past.

Others think it was always an asteroid, but one that collided with another asteroid long, long time ago: a mystery -- to be sure!

More on this mystery later in the story.

Each December these Geminid meteors, those objects left over from 3200 Phaethon, pass through Earth's atmosphere, allowing us to gaze upon a spectacular display of 'falling stars,' which are not stars at all but extremely tiny meteors (meteoroids are in space, meteors are in Earth's atmosphere, and meteorites fall on Earth).

Look for the Geminid meteor shower on the nights of December 13 and 14. The peak is expected just after midnight on the 14th (eastern daylight time, EDT, in North America), which relates to about 9:00 Pacific Standard Time (PST) on the west coast of the United States and Canada.

Astronomers are predicting that the best places to see the Geminids are in Europe and North America, although they will be viewable in almost all parts of Earth.

In Europe the peak of the shower is expected at about 500 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

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