The Geminid meteor shower lights up the night of 13 to 14 … – La Vanguardia

Madrid, Dec 13 (EFE) .- The Geminids, one of the most active meteor showers, again offering as every year in December, its highest activity. The light show will take place at night from 13 to 14 December, especially the morning of the 14th.

It will be from one am, Eastern Time, when this shower of shooting stars can be observed without problems, since the moon is waning.

Like every year, this particular rain star high intensity shows a peak of activity in mid-December, which this year runs from Sunday 7th to December 17, which in Europe is expected to have its maximum activity at night from 13 to 14 December when, explained the astrophysicist Astronomical Institute of Canarias (IAC), Miquel Serra Ricart, will fall half a meteor every two minutes.

The moon, waning, will leave around midnight, but should not be a problem to watch a lot of meteors, some of them brilliant (even though their rates are lower than those Perseids) if we are in a dark place.

Over the past year the maximum the morning of December 14 expected and the observation window from the Canaries was approximately 2 hours from start of Luna (05.00 hours ) to the astronomical dawn (07.00).

Despite the cold and the narrow strip of watching the show last year and did not disappoint, with close to 120 meteors per hour activity, Geminids became the most spectacular rain of the year, presenting a higher Perseid activity.

So called ‘shooting stars’ are actually tiny dust particles of different sizes, some smaller than grains of sand, they are leaving comets along their orbits around the sun.

The current resulting particles (called meteoroids) due to “thaw” produced by the solar heat is dispersed by the orbit of Comet and is crossed each year by the Earth in its orbit around the sun.

During this meeting, the dust particles disintegrate when entering at high speed in the atmosphere, creating the known light strokes receiving . the scientific name of meteors

This is true for most rainfall, but not for the Geminids: there is no comet match the path of the cloud of “debris”

<. p> The origin of the Geminids was a mystery until the solar probes Stereo (NASA) confirmed the emergence of a small tail on the asteroid 3200 Phaethon (at closest approach to the Sun or perihelion) single object moving in the same orbit the cloud causing Geminid meteoroids.

From that time, 3200 Phaethon is known as “rock comet”. A comet is a rocky asteroid that comes close to the sun thus enabling a queue is formed by surface disruption due to overheating.