The Geminids are a reliable and prolific shower, offering perhaps 50 meteors per hour in a dark sky. This year, NASA experts are suggesting the rates might be as high as 100 meteors per hour at the peak. However, you'll need to get away from city lights and find a wide open view of the sky. City, state and national parks are good, and you might be able to camp and make a night of it. Simply enjoy the comfort of a reclining lawn chair, the warmth of a sleeping bag, a thermos with a hot drink, and the company of family and friends, if they're willing to stay up and battle the cold!
The Geminids rank as one of the best meteor showers for the year in the Northern Hemisphere. You can also see this shower from the tropical and subtropical regions in the Southern Hemisphere. Farther south, the radiant of the Geminid meteor shower never gets very high in the sky, so the meteors are not as prevalent at temperate southerly latitudes.
This meteor shower gets its name from the constellation Gemini the Twins. If you trace the paths of all the Geminid meteors backward, they appear to radiate from the certain point in front of Gemini. This point is called the meteor shower radiant, and is located near the star Castor.
Most meteor showers take place when our planet Earth crosses the orbital path of a comet. The comet debris plunges into Earth’s upper atmosphere, and the vaporizing particles fill the night with meteors. But the Geminid meteor shower appears to be an oddity. The shower’s parent body appears to be a near-Earth asteroid, rather than a comet. Astronomers have named this object 3200 Phaethon.
I'm sure I'll be able to see the "show" beautifully, since I'm up and out the door before 3 o'clock in the morning. I may make the extra effort tomorrow to get up a little earlier to spend some time outside watching the meteor showers. The fair weather tonight will continue tomorrow and into the start of the upcoming weekend before it turns unsettled late in the weekend through the middle of next week.
Paul
