Just a quick note that tonight marks the peak of the Geminid meteor shower.
Peak hours: Around 10:00 PM through 2:00 AM, with activity continuing into the early morning.
The meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Gemini, but this shower is huge and you’ll see them in all corners of the sky as they hit our atmosphere.
Expect a meteor a minute AT LEAST though not all of them will be massive. Some will be massive, and you might even get a fireball. (Not THAT fireball). We’ll also get colored meteors because Phaeton is made of different minerals that burn in different colors. Some of the meteors will move very slow, too…you’ll see what I mean.
Sodium → bright yellow
Nickel → green
Magnesium → blue-white
Iron → yellow-orange
Calcium → violet
The Geminids are also unusual because their parent body is an asteroid, not a comet.
Their source is 3200 Phaethon, discovered in 1983 — a strange hybrid of sorts, often called a “rock comet” which behaves partly like an asteroid, partly like a dead comet nucleus.
There is something compelling to me about the idea that this meteor shower doesn’t come from an icy wanderer, but from a sun-scorched stone that burns, cracks, and releases its dust as it approaches the light.