Posted on 12/13/2014 9:27:57 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine
You can follow live coverage of the shower at the link. They are using a meteor shower radio, from their listening post in New Mexico, to listen when the meteors strike the atmosphere and leave an ionized gas trail that reflects radio waves.
The radiant is located in the constellation of Gemini which is in the NW direction about 40 degrees above the horizon.
Dress warmly!
I stood outside for about 15 minutes and saw six of them.
Stellarium is a good app to download for free and show you where Gemini and the other constellations are located.
The Moon hasn’t risen yet, but when it does it’ll be a half-Moon.
Moon rise on the West coast is about 12:50am tonight.
ScienceCasts: Embers from a Rock Comet: The 2014 Geminid Meteor Shower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT3D6t8VT-k
Overcast here in Texas.
Cloudy here in MA
Saw 20 in about 10 min in an arc extending from North to West.
Where in NM is their listening post? Tuesday night I drove south past the Very Large Array. It was a cloudy and rainy night, as is tonight. It’s the perfect spot for those giant listening dishes. Always amazes me just how desolate it is out there. Couldn’t see more than 100yrds in any direction with the cloud cover, and no lights to be seen anywhere most of the drive. Heck, when I needed to stop and pee, I just stopped right there in the middle of the highway, since I don’t think I saw but one other pick up for that whole stretch, and that was before 10 pm. Very quiet and no earthly lights to obscure the night sky.
I’m getting in the shower now, please keep me updated.
lol
Just came back from a beach in Carmel. Saw about 10 over an hour.
I was outside — in Southern Idaho — for five minutes and saw two of them. Wind chill is 23 degrees here. After the five minutes the thrill was gone!
Clear skies (north GA mountains, 2;00 AM eastern) but the moon is up ... Was outside for a little while, but nothing visible. Lots of nearby lights though.
Foggy and cloudy here tonight. Fricking global warming....
I saw a few here in MA. They were very long streaks.
Ah. So it is a meteor shower.
I saw two pretty good ones. I figured there must a meteor shower.
Bump!
The missus and I decided to sit on the back porch and watch the sky, not knowing this was tonight. Saw 15 in an hour, even being in a not so good area to watch. At least 2 spectacular ones burned across the sky for us. It was one of the best shows we ever saw. Really wonderful...
The problem with annual showers is, no one can be sure that there will be much of a show. Before radio, the discovery of annual showers was achieved optically, by astronomers. The only media was the newspaper and books, and so going out to watch for meteors was big big fun.
Some of the annual showers were much more impressive, apparently hitting a peak during a few consecutive years, and thereafter apparently dying out.
On any clear night, one will probably notice perhaps four or five per hour, but in my experience, 99 percent of the time (at least) it will be in the peripheral vision, and gone by the time one turns one’s head. I’ve only seen one daylight meteor, and it was amazing stuff, lasting a good ten seconds before dropping below the sightline. Never heard anything further, probably was far off and finished disintegrating, arriving at the surface as grains of, well, sand.
The existence of these streams is verified by radioastronomy, or rather, it has been and can be, because they make a signal as they burn through or largely burn up in the atmosphere.
Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE, extra to APoD.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.