The Geminids are the best meteor shower of the year, and can produce 100+ meteors an hour. They appear to come from the constellation of Gemini (the Twins), you will find the two main stars of Gemini, Castor and Pollux, moderately high in the East by 9:00 pm. There will be no Moon in the sky to spoil the view this year as the 14th is New Moon so if the weather is clear go and have a look. The Geminids tend to produce bright slow moving meteors.
Meteors are tiny specks of dust and stone, mostly the size of a grain of sand or smaller. They burn up when they enter the Earth’s atmosphere because of friction; they are travelling at 10s of miles a second! Most meteors come from the tails of comets, they are the debris left behind in the comets orbit which the Earth then passes through. But there is no comet associated with the Geminids. Instead the particles come from asteroid 3200 “Phaethon”. Now the difference between a comet and an asteroid, put simply, is if it has a tail.
We have seen an asteroid suddenly develop a tail; we have also seen comets which have been observed over many orbits suddenly no longer produce a tail. Could Phaethon once have been a comet? We simple do not know!
Tony Roberts
Edenbridge and District Astronomers