They are called Geminiads, they happen every year around this time and are visible all over the world, particularly in the northern hemisphere. It will not be an exception in Portugal, where the peak of this meteor shower will be around 1:00 p.m. on December 14 (Wednesday), but it will be possible throughout the morning from December 13 to 14 (Tuesday to Wednesday). “better to see” these meteors that “are generally very bright.”
“The Geminids will have a peak that, unfortunately, for us in Portugal is expected to occur around 1:00 p.m. on the 14th, but the meteors that are usually very bright begin to be seen best early on the night of the 13th and 14th. in the morning you should see a lot of meteors, you don’t have to wait for the peak, “he explains to TSF Ricardo Cardoso Reis, from the scientific communication group of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences.
“They [os meteoros] They are already visible at this time, but they increase in number until the 14th and then start to decrease until around the 17th.”
The visibility of these meteor showers depends on the weather conditions, but also on the moon, which is in its waning quarter, illuminating “a large part of the sky for most of the night.” Therefore, instead of 150 meteors per hour, “this year we should see between 30 and 40.”
“Anyway, they are very bright because the speed at which they enter our atmosphere is very, very high, something like 300 times the speed of a bullet. Although they are few, they will be worth looking at if time permits, ”she underlines. .
What are the “curious” Geminates?
But what characterizes these showers anyway? Ricardo Cardoso Reis affirms that “they are curious”, because “they are the few that we know of that do not have their origin in the debris of a comet, or at least of a comet as we normally know”.
“This object is called 3200 Phaethon or Phaeton and even today it is not known if it is an asteroid or a rocky nucleus of a dead comet, that is, a comet that no longer has ice around it. How close is its orbit? to the Sun every 1.4 years or so, the Earth goes through the debris and makes those trails in the sky from meteors entering the atmosphere,” he says.
Outside the big cities and in places without light: how to observe these meteors?
In large cities, light pollution makes it difficult to observe this type of phenomenon, reducing the number of meteors “by 10 or 20 percent.” However, if you want to take advantage of the early morning from Tuesday to Wednesday to try to observe some meteors, take note of the advice of Ricardo Cardoso Reis:
“This year, particularly because of the Moon, the only advice will be to try to block the direct light of the Moon. We can imagine that the Moon would be the Sun and, if we wanted to observe something, we had to be in the shade to see better, in this case it will be something like this: try to find a wall of a house or a tree that blocks direct sunlight to accustom our eyes to the dark and, in this way, we should be able to see a few more meteors, try to stay facing the constellation of Gemini, which is where all the meteors seem to come from, that is, more or less to the east, So, preferably, lie down and look up and, in principle, they will appear all over the sky.”
Source: TSF
