A Gemini meteorite is trapped in its final, burning moments.
NASA
The 2020 Gemini meteor shower has officially surpassed its prime, but a spectacular view of astronomers leaving Monday night and early Tuesday morning still awaits.
Gemini’s official climax came Monday night early Monday night, and it certainly provided plenty of shooting stars and some bright, slow fireballs from my fast, dark-sky location in the Sangere de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico. But the best new moon levels continue Monday night and Tuesday morning, with plenty of meteor activity still to come.
The Perseid Meteor shower attracts a lot of attention because it is active on hot summer nights in the Northern Hemisphere, but Geminites are actually stronger over many years.
Even better, it’s one of the few big meteor showers that does not require waking up well at dawn to catch the best part. According to the American Meteorological Association (AMS), Geminites “provide good performance before midnight because the Gemini galaxy has been well placed since 22:00.”
This means that the sky where the meteorite is exposed is placed high in the sky at the beginning of the night. It can be very high at 2am local time, but going out before midnight gives you a good chance to see a lot more. In addition, those hours are the best time to see bright, slow-moving “earth crazers” on the horizon.
“I like to face south, I have a radiation slide westward in my field of view. It also allows me to observe active small showers in the same region of the sky,” says Robert Lanceford of AMS.
Bottom line: Not a bad time to search for Geminites. Also, you don’t Required Staring at Gemini to find Geminits. Meteors can appear anywhere in the night sky, but usually move In the distance From Gemini.
2020 Perseid meteor shower photos shine brightly in the dark year
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If you can manage it, all you have to do is dress properly, step back, adjust your eyes, relax and look. Geminites can range from pale, quick “shooting stars” to bright, intense color lines, and even a fireball here and there. You will have the best odds of finding meteorites in the Northern Hemisphere, but Geminites are visible south of the equator, then at night and in low numbers.
A meteor shower comes to us as the Earth passes through clouds of debris by visiting comets. In the case of Geminites, the debris comes from so-called “rock comets” 3200 Python, Which is thought to be a perishable comet orbiting the inner solar system.