Meteor Shower

[tyler811]

Hi Everyone,
It’s that time of the year again. Time for the annual Geminid Meteor Shower.

The Shower will peak on Sunday night. As usual, the shooting stars will appear in all parts of the sky. If you trace them backwards they will all appear to come from the constellation Gemini.

Gemini will be low in the east-northeast after about 8 pm. It will get higher as the night goes on.
The best time to see the Geminids will be after midnight until about an hour before dawn. Some of the predictions are saying we could see up to 3 meteors a minute.

If you can’t stay up that late, then try when it gets dark; any time after about 6 or 6:30. This early in the evening, you might only average a shooting star every 5 or 10 minutes, so don’t try to watch just during the commercials.

Make sure all of your outside lights are off, so they don’t spoil your night vision.

While you are out, early in the evening look for very bright Jupiter in the southern part of the sky and after midnight look for reddish Mars rising in the east-north east.

Some astronomers are theorizing that the Geminids will become the best meteor shower of the year. The Perseids in August seem to be diminishing, while we are starting to get into the denser part of the stream of debris that causes the Geminids.

 

[SunSamurai]

2012

 

[spidey07]

Thanks for the reminder!

 

[zinfamous]

Oh snap! The Germans are invading again!???

!!111111

 

[Brainonska511]

Wait, so is prime viewing time between Saturday and Sunday (Midnight to 6AM EST) or is it between Sunday and Monday (8PM to 6AM EST)?

 

[tyler811]

Thanks for the reminder!

Your welcome The family and I usually do the Perseids in August but this year it was not a very good one. Kinda cold to be watching the Geminid but we will give it try.

 

[El Guaraguao]

guaranteed to miss this event.

 

[tyler811]

Wait, so is prime viewing time between Saturday and Sunday (Midnight to 6AM EST) or is it between Sunday and Monday (8PM to 6AM EST)?

It said best viewing would be Sunday night, so I would say anytime Sunday night with the best viewing between 12 am (the start of Monday) and 6 am Monday morning. At least that is the way I am reading it.

 

[spidey07]

Wait, so is prime viewing time between Saturday and Sunday (Midnight to 6AM EST) or is it between Sunday and Monday (8PM to 6AM EST)?

It's my understanding that you can view starting tonight but there won't be many of them. But the peak is Sunday evening into Monday morning. Also more googling says the shower should be really good especially since there won't by any moonlight.

 

[tyler811]

Damn nice Spidey Thanks.

It's my understanding that you can view starting tonight but there won't be many of them. But the peak is Sunday evening into Monday morning. Also more googling says the shower should be really good especially since there won't by any moonlight.

 

[AbAbber2k]

Doubt I'll be able to catch it. Suppose to be cloudy all weekend, and even if it wasn't, it'd be hard for me to find a good vantage point (lots of hills and whatnot to the east since I live on the west coast and I think the shower is suppose to be low over the horizon).

 

[El Guaraguao]

I think this show has started already. I looked into the sky for around 2-3min and already seen 3 of em. Im facing NE, and looking up obviously...if that helps, lol

 

[KingGheedora]

Can i see this from the east coast? Will the city lights of NYC at night prevent from being able to see anything at all?

 

[BUTCH1]

Thanks OP, meteor showers are just so cool to see..

 

[tyler811]

Can i see this from the east coast? Will the city lights of NYC at night prevent from being able to see anything at all?

the higher up you can get (building not mushroom) the better it will be.

 

[tyler811]

Doubt I'll be able to catch it. Suppose to be cloudy all weekend, and even if it wasn't, it'd be hard for me to find a good vantage point (lots of hills and whatnot to the east since I live on the west coast and I think the shower is suppose to be low over the horizon).

Not so sir, the later at night the higher Gemini gets in the sky which means if the best viewing is 12am est time till 6 am est then that would be 9pm-3am your time. I do believe if you head out at 11 pm they would be high in the sky.

 

[Muse]

Why does this have to happen in mid December? It'll be damn cold. I watched one meteor shower here, got up on my roof, lay there bundled up in clothes in the wee hours and it was fantastic. Never knew when I'd see one and when I did, had no idea what direction it would be going, where it would come from, what it would look like. It was very very trippy.

What would be the best viewing time for the Geminids on the west coast?

Not so sir, the later at night the higher Gemini gets in the sky which means if the best viewing is 12am est time till 6 am est then that would be 9pm-3am your time. I do believe if you head out at 11 pm they would be high in the sky.

Oh, the answer's here. Well, I'm in the SF Bay area and there's a storm tomorrow (Saturday), but by Sunday that's over. It's possible that there will be clearing by Sunday evening, I'm thinking, and if so, the storm will have cleared the air completely. Next storm after that is supposed to be Tuesday into Wednesday. The meteor shower might be spectacular viewing here.

 

[spidey07]

Thanks again OP. Even in my area the skies are clear

I only have a spotting scope but it starting. Point your eyes to where i posted.

Your not a true geek unless you observe this.

 

[Muse]

As usual, the shooting stars will appear in all parts of the sky. If you trace them backwards they will all appear to come from the constellation Gemini.

The one time I succeeded in viewing a meteor shower I at first tried focusing on the part of the sky that the meteors were supposed to originate from but my sense of it was that they were coming from all over and going in random directions. Each one looked completely different from the last in terms of color, length, speed, brightness, point of origin and direction, time since the last one seen. It was marvelous. Your assertion that these will appear to come from the constellation Gemini has me skeptical. That shower was the morning of November 18, 2001. Maybe this will be different.

 

[Muse]

Article in S.F. Chronicle on Monday, 11/19/01 describing this very spectacular event:


"Celestial magic Leonid meteor shower delights sky watchers"

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

Monday, November 19, 2001


Shooting stars flashed across the sky
by the thousands and fireballs
exploded in bursts of brightness as the
annual Leonid meteor shower lived up
to forecasts long before dawn across
the country yesterday and turned into a
true "meteor storm."

In the Bay Area, thousands of avid sky
watchers jammed state parks and
remote hillsides to catch their first sight
of the spectacle, and if city dwellers
saw only a few meteor trails where
urban light pollution dimmed the view,
those who watched in darkness saw
what some astronomers estimated as a
storm of at least 10,000 meteors an
hour.

"It was celestial magic on a
crystal-clear night," said Carla Jones of
San Mateo, who entertained a small
star party of guests lying on their backs
at her hillside home just outside the city
until shortly after 2 a.m., the predicted
peak of the event.

The Leonid meteors are actually dust
particles blasted by the sun's radiant
energy from the tail of a comet called
Tempel-Tuttle whose looping solar
orbit carries it into the inner solar
system roughly every 33 years, and
this event was by far the most vivid
since 1966, astronomers said.

On Mount Tamalpais last night, more
than 2,000 people in their cars jammed
the park's Rock Springs Parking lot
and at least 1,000 more were turned
away when the road was closed, said
Tinka Watson, a volunteer trail and
nature interpreter who helped guide
the traffic.

"It was a glorious night," she said, "and
the meteors kept coming and coming --
many with long, broad tails that shone
vividly in green and orange and
yellowish colors."

Tucker Hiatt and David Piazza, physics
teachers at the Branson School in
Ross, took 18 students camping out all
night on Tamalpais and watched the
meteor trails by the hundreds. At one
point, Hiatt said, his students counted
more than 100 in five minutes, and at
times they were flashing every two to
three seconds.

At Henry Coe State Park east of
Morgan Hill the traffic jam was so
dense there was congestion both in
and out of the entrance, said James
Van Nuland, a retired IBM programmer
and secretary of the San Jose
Astronomical Association.

"The Leonids were flaring in reds and
greens," he said, "and we estimated a
rate of 10,000 an hour at the peak
around 2 a.m.," Van Nuland said.
"Many of them brighter than Jupiter,
and at least one exploded twice as it hit
the Earth's upper atmosphere."

Beth Elliott of Oakland, no astronomer
but a self-described "computer geek,"
drove 75 miles to the Henry Coe park
and was thrilled. "They were flashing
so fast, I couldn't keep track of them,"
Elliott said. "At one point I turned
around and saw seven or eight fireballs
radiating like star bursts right out of the
Leo."

At Lake Tahoe, with almost no lights
around, the seeing was extraordinary,
said David Hatchett, a skier and rock
climber who watched the display from
the end of a lakeside dock.

"They flashed almost constantly, and
some brilliant trails crossed the entire
sky over the lake from the zenith to the
western horizon," Hatchett said. "Their
trails, with their bright heads, were just
like small comets that lasted a half
minute or more. Amazing!"

An ironic fate, however, beset Peter
Jenniskens, an astronomer with the
SETI Institute in Mountain View, who
works at NASA's Ames Research
Center, and is the principal investigator
of a NASA-sponsored Leonid meteor
study team that flew all night from
Edwards Air Force Base in Kern
County aboard a heavily instrumented
Air Force tanker to observe and count
the objects.

The team of 20 scientists flew, but
without Jenniskens, their chief
scientist. He is a Dutch national, and
was barred from the flight at the last
minute because of new federal security
rules imposed since Sept. 11.

So Jenniskens was forced to spend the
night on the ground watching the
meteors from a dark wilderness area
near Edwards and counting at least
2,000 an hour without the airborne
instruments.

"But it was definitely a storm -- at least
2,000 an hour," Jenniskens said in a
telephone interview yesterday, "and at
one point, I counted 34 in just two
minutes, all of them brilliant and all of
them beautiful. It was a blast." He and
his luckier airborne colleagues will be
analyzing the aircraft instrument data
later.

Sky watchers all over the country
caught similar views of the brilliant
meteors, and many left long,
illuminated trails of microscopic
particles behind them as they flared.
The bright, elongated veils of dust --
some microscopic and some as big as
marbles -- acted like the electrically
charged atoms of Earth's ionosphere
30 miles high that often reflect radio
signals for unusually long distances.

From Magdalena, N.M., for example,
photographer Michael Mideke, working
near the radio telescope installation
called the Very Long Array, reported by
telephone that he turned on his small
transistor radio when the meteor trails
were thick and picked up voices and
music bouncing off the dust from FM
stations as far off as St. Louis, nearly
1,000 miles away.

"The Leonids were extraordinary,"
Mideke said, "but the voices and music
were a jumble."

 

[tyler811]

The one time I succeeded in viewing a meteor shower I at first tried focusing on the part of the sky that the meteors were supposed to originate from but my sense of it was that they were coming from all over and going in random directions. Each one looked completely different from the last in terms of color, length, speed, brightness, point of origin and direction, time since the last one seen. It was marvelous. Your assertion that these will appear to come from the constellation Gemini has me skeptical. That shower was the morning of November 18, 2001. Maybe this will be different.

Actually that is not my assertion as it was copy copied from an email I received from the local planetarium. I however should have said as much.

 

[El Guaraguao]

bump!

 

[El Guaraguao]

Just got back from checking the show on my roof. I sat up there for about 15 min, and seen one go by every 30secs or so. To tell you the truth, it got boring really quick, lol. They're very faint so far, will check in another couple hours.

BTW, this is my first meteor shower, ha.

 

[Freshgeardude]

going to try looking outside my house now. im a little north of miami so idk if i will see it.

 

[coldmeat]

hmm, maybe I'll check it out. Can't stay up too late.