Geminid Meteor Shower on 13th December
2012
This was one of the more regularly *good* meteor showers of the year. If
you had clear skies on that Thursday
night you could have seen the meteors.
The radiant, the spot in the sky the meteors appeared to "come from" was
in the constellation Gemini (hence the meteor shower name). Meteors were
visible in the pre-midnight hours than having to wait until 1am or later to
catch the show. Given that the radiant was in Gemini, northern hemisphere
observers had a better time of seeing more meteors than southern hemisphere
observers.
This year the shower coincided with the New Moon, so there was no extra
extraneous light to wash out the sky (but for the city or near other light
polluting sources)
This meteor shower, under ideal conditions (totally dark sky, completely
unobstructed horizons all around), typically yield anywhere from 80-150 (or
more, last year it apparently got upwards of 200) meteors per hour. I.e., the
chances were pretty good you would see some if you wait around for 10-15
minutes.
Some tips for future viewing :
Binoculars, telescopes, etc. You don't need them, and you really don't
want them for watching for shooting stars. They travel too fast. Meteors travel
across large distances of the sky compared to the field of view that binoculars
or telescopes give you. If you're meteor hunting, you don't want to distract
yourself with closing down your field of view to a tiny part of the sky (unless
you see something unusual and want to check it out - like a star cluster, a
galaxy, a planet*, etc)
Cameras and photographing meteors. Meteors last anywhere from a couple/few
seconds to a short flash in the sky. To capture a photo of one, you'll need a
tripod and a camera capable of timed exposures and having reasonably high ISO
settings.
Here are the links for a video and still photos shot by an Amateur
Astronomer.
