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The best shot stars of the class should be visible on Sunday night ( Dec. 13 ) into the wee hr of Monday good morning ( Dec.14 ) .
That ’s when theGeminids meteor showeris expected to peak , harmonize to Sky & Telescope magazine . This annual shooting star shower bath nonplus its name because the bulk of the meteors seem to emanate from near the configuration Gemini . The blank space rocks occur from an object called 3200 Phaethon , which is a rocky asteroid that cast off as it travel in area around the sunshine . Some of the chunks of rock candy shed by 3200 Phaethon goose egg intoEarth ’s atmosphere and fire up , creating a salient light show every December .
Meteors light up the skies over western Iowa during the Geminid meteor shower.
" It ’s worth braving the frigidity during this rain shower ’s peak , " Diana Hannikainen , the observing editor at Sky & Telescope , enjoin in a assertion . " The Geminids offer the good show of ' shooting mavin ' all year . "
relate : Dazzling Draconids : persona of a meteor shower
The show peaks at around 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday ( Dec. 13 ) dark ( 1 a.m. UTC Dec. 14 ) and should continue well past midnight . The radiant — or point from which the most meteors will appear to exhale — will be at its superlative above the horizon at 2 a.m. EST ( 7 a.m. UTC ) on Dec. 14 , making for some of the adept showing . However , the radiant will be above the horizon for most northerly Hemisphere viewers by Sunday at 9 p.m. EST ( 2 a.m. UTC ) , get for great wake even earlier in the night . Even well , the moon is new on Sunday night , creating darker sky conditions .
" If you ’ve got a cleared , dark sky with no light pollution , you might see a meteor streak across the sky every bit or two from 10 p.m. until dawn on the night of the height , " says Hannikainen .
Sky & Telescope offered these summit for successful meteor present viewing :
— Amazing photos of the Perseid shooting star exhibitioner
— In photos : Glitzy images of a supermoon
— When place attacks : 6 craziest meteor impacts
The dust you ’ll see mottle through the sky is sand- to pea - sized . These fragment moult off 3200 Phaethon as it come on the Dominicus , which heats its surface to about 1,300 point Fahrenheit ( 700 degree Anders Celsius ) . The particle reach Earth ’s atmosphere at 79,000 mph ( 127,138 km / h ) and evaporate due to the rubbing of air .
After the Geminids , thenext chance to see meteor showerswill be the Ursids in late December and the Quadrantids from late December 2020 to former January 2021 .
Originally print on Live Science .
