Thursday, December 13, 2012

Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight!

I've been reading various articles about the Geminid meteor shower. Conditions are excellent this year because the skies are clear and the moon won't interfere with viewing. You might see as many as 100 meteors per hour with bursts of several within a minute. The peak may start as early as 10pm tonight and continue until about 3am Friday morning. The reports have been good from areas where people are already viewing the meteor shower. The key is to get to a dark area that doesn't have a lot of glare from city lights. I've been disappointed by these things before but I think this one is worth a try.
Update: I was in my backyard at 9pm and was able to see a handful of meteors streak across the sky over a period of 20 minutes. There was too much interference from lights  in the neighborhood so I went to a dark area near Meshomasic Forest for better viewing.
 I counted 38 meteors there over a 45 minute period. The best part was when I saw 5 consecutive meteors in a row. If I didn't have to work the next day I would have stuck it out longer. The photo is a view of the constellation Orion as seen from my backyard. I used the starry sky mode on my Panasonic fz35. Not exactly a "stellar"
shot but at least you can see it.

3 comments:

Costa Rica birding said...

Oh! I couldnot see the stars!!!

Larry said...

Costa Rica birding-Sorry you missed the show. It was cludy here during the Perseids. It's tough to hit the right conditions.

Kathie Brown said...

I think I saw a few the night before but on the peak night we actually had clouds and rain here! Nice shot!