Saturday 13 December 2014

Geminid Meteor Shower Tonight

The Geminid's is the Northern Hemisphere's most spectacular meteor shower but because it happens in the depths of winter, it is not as well viewed as the Perseid's in the much more clement August.
For the past two years we have driven out to the dark South Downs, sat in a field and watched a heap of clouds obscure the view but tonight the Society for Popular Astronomy have said that conditions will be as good as they get and with a waning moon it should be a spectacular for the climax of the meteor shower.
The MET Office are not quite so confident and forecast mist and cloud for this part of the woods until 2am and a temperature of 0c so it might be another evening of cloud watching in freezing conditions.
The best time to view them is from 10pm to 2am with as many as 100 of the multi-coloured meteors an hour shooting across the sky so it's grab a flask of coffee, a blanket and reserve your place in the NHS for hypothermia treatment tomorrow morning and enjoy the Solar System at its amazing best and remember it's only a meteorite if it lands, it's a meteor otherwise.

3 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
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Lucy said...

Not brilliant, saw about 20 in 3 hours. You see any there?

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.