If you missed out on last month's Leonid Meteor Shower, don’t fret. What potentially will be the best meteor display of the year is just around the corner, scheduled to reach its peak during the overnight hours of December 13-14: The Geminid Meteor Shower.
If the Geminids occurred during a warmer month, they would be as familiar to most people as the famous August Perseids. Indeed, a night all snuggled-up in a sleeping bag under the stars is an attractive proposition in summer, and many campers on vacation often independently “discover” the Perseids. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine anything more bone chilling than lying on the ground in mid-December for several hours around midnight, looking up at a clear sky that has brought radiational cooling and plummeting temperatures since sunset.
But if you are willing to bundle up, this coming Sunday night into early Monday morning will be when the Geminids are predicted to be at their peak. And depending how dark your location is, and how much of the sky you can see, meteors may streak into view that night at an average rate of one or two per minute. The Geminids are—for those willing to brave the chill of a December night—a very fine winter shower, and usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers, even surpassing the Perseids.
Studies of past displays show that this shower has a reputation for being rich both in slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs as well as faint meteors, with relatively fewer objects of medium brightness. Many appear yellowish in hue. Some even appear to form jagged or divided paths.
These meteors appear to emanate from a point near the bright star Castor, in the constellation of Gemini, hence the name “Geminid.” The track of each one does not necessarily begin near Castor or even in the constellation Gemini, but it always turns out that the path of a Geminid extended backward passes through a tiny region of sky about 0.2 degrees in diameter (an effect of perspective). In apparent size, that’s less than half the width of the Moon. As such, this is a rather sharply defined radiant as most meteor showers go; suggesting the stream is “young”—perhaps only several thousand years old.
Excellent Viewing Conditions
Unlike the case this year with the August Perseids, this year’s December Geminids will not be hindered at all by moonlight. On Monday morning, the Moon—a narrow sliver of a crescent, just two days before New—will come up over the east-southeast horizon soon after 5:30 a.m. for most locations and will pose very little, if any interference for meteor watchers.
Best of all, Earth is predicted to be passing through the densest part of the Geminid swarm at around 5:00 GMT on December 14. That means that much of Europe and North America will be in excellent position to catch the absolute peak of this display, which should persist for more than several hours. Keep in mind that regardless of where you live, the very best time to watch for the Geminids will come at 2 a.m. local time on Monday morning. At that hour, the constellation Gemini will appear almost directly overhead.
Late Sunday night on through early Monday morning, a single observer blessed with a dark and unobstructed view of the sky might average as many as 60 to 120 meteors per hour —one to two meteor sightings per minute.
Watch for Earthgrazers
Generally speaking, depending on your location, the star Castor begins to come up above the east-northeast horizon right around the time evening twilight is coming to an end. As Gemini is beginning to climb the eastern sky just after darkness falls, there is a fair chance of perhaps catching sight of some “Earth-grazing” meteors early on Sunday evening.
Earthgrazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from a point near to, or even just below, the horizon. Such meteors are so distinctive because they follow very long paths nearly parallel to our atmosphere. As Gemini climbs higher into the sky, however, these very long paths will become much shorter.
The Geminids will appear noticeably more numerous in the hours after 10 p.m. local time, because the shower’s radiant is already fairly high in the eastern sky by then. As was already noted, the best views come at around 2 a.m., when their radiant point will be passing very nearly overhead. The higher a shower’s radiant, the more meteors it produces all over the sky.
Slowpokes
Because Geminid meteoroids are several times denser than the cometary dust flakes that supply most meteor showers and because of their relatively slow speed with which they encounter Earth—22 mi (35 km) per second—Geminid Meteors appear to linger a bit longer in view than most. As compared to an Orionid or Leonid meteor that can whiz across your line of sight in less than a second, a Geminid meteor moves only about half as fast.
Slow rise . . . rapid decline
The Earth moves quickly through this meteor stream producing a somewhat broad, lopsided activity profile. Hourly rates begin to slowly increase on December 10, when hourly rates will be about one-quarter maximum rates.
After Sunday night, their intensity should drop off more sharply: rates on Monday night/Tuesday morning will have diminished to about 30 to 60 per hour. Yet, there is good reason to keep watching for Geminids even after their peak has passed, for those “late” Geminids, tend to be especially bright. And renegade late stragglers might be seen for a week or more after the night of maximum activity.
Stay warm and "Shower" with a Friend
I brought this up this point earlier, but certainly it should be addressed again: Make sure you're warm and comfortable. Likely your local weather will be more appropriate for taking in a hot bath as opposed to a meteor shower! Meteor watching in December can be a long, cold business. You wait and you wait for meteors to appear. If they don't appear right away, and if you're cold and uncomfortable, you're not going to be looking for meteors for very long!
The late Henry Neely, who for many years served as a popular lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium, once had this to say about watching for the Geminids: “Take the advice of a man whose teeth have chattered on many a winter’s night—wrap up much more warmly than you think is necessary!” Hot cocoa, tea or coffee can take the edge off the chill, as well as provide a slight stimulus.
It's even better if you can observe with a friend. That way, you can keep each other awake, as well as cover more sky. Give your eyes time to dark-adapt before starting.
Asteroid or Dead Comet?
A final point to note are that Geminids stand apart from the other meteor showers in that they seem to have been spawned not by a comet, but by 3200 Phaeton, an Earth-crossing asteroid. Then again, the Geminids may be comet debris after all, for some astronomers consider Phaeton to really be the dead nucleus of a burned-out comet that somehow got trapped into an unusually tight orbit.