Five Fun Facts for the 2015 Geminid Meteor Shower

Geminids_1

#1. The Geminid meteor shower can be seen from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Because they are pieces of an asteroid, Geminid meteoroids can penetrate deeper into Earth’s atmosphere than most other meteor showers, creating beautiful long arcs viewable for 1-2 seconds. Click the image to view a Geminid in action.

Marshall Space Flight Center will host a live Tweet Chat from 10 p.m. Dec. 13, until 2 a.m. on Dec. 14. Meteor experts Dr. Bill Cooke, Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw, all from NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, located at Marshall, will stay up late answering questions via Twitter. NASA followers interested in joining the online conversation can tweet their meteor questions to the Marshall Twitter account, @NASA_Marshall, or simply tag their tweets with #askNASA.

Geminids-2

#2. Geminids are pieces of debris from an object called 3200 Phaethon. It was long thought to be an asteroid, but is now classified as an extinct comet.

Phaethon’s eccentric orbit around the sun brings it well inside the orbit of Mercury every 1.4 years. Traveling this close to the sun blasts Phaethon with solar heat that may boil jets of dust into the Geminid stream. Of all the debris streams earth passes through each year, the Geminid shower is the most massive. When we add up the amount of dust in this stream, it outweighs other streams by factors of 5 to 500. Click the image to view a Geminid in action.

Geminids_3

#3. Because they are usually bright, many people say Geminid meteors show color. In addition to glowing white, they have been described as appearing yellow, green, or blue.

Geminid meteoroids hit earth’s atmosphere traveling 78,000 mph or 35 km/s. That may sound fast, but it is actually somewhat slow compared to other meteor showers.

Geminids_4

#4. Geminids are named because the meteors seem to radiate from the constellation of Gemini. The shower lasts a couple of weeks, with meteors typically seen Dec. 4-17, peaking near Dec 13-14. Click the image to view a Geminid in action.

Geminids_5

#5. The Geminids started out as a relatively weak meteor shower when first discovered in the early 19th century. Over time, it has grown into the strongest annual shower, with theoretical rates above 120 meteors per hour.

 

4 thoughts on “Five Fun Facts for the 2015 Geminid Meteor Shower”

  1. I saw some strange activity going on in the sky around 6:15-6:45 pm last night 12/8/15. I can see how you could explain the orange yellow flashes but my husband saw what looked like 3 10×8 red window shaped objects that lit up in sequence and went off in sequence. Can you explain what this might have been. We live in Alabama

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *