'Year's Best" Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight

[John Satterlee]

Year's Best" Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight" Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
Updated December 13, 2004

Attention skywatchers: Grab a lawn chair and bundle up, because what experts believe will be this year's best meteor shower peaks tonight. In the hours around midnight the Geminids will streak across the night sky at rates of a meteor per minute or more.

"I think that the Geminids should be the best shower this year," said Bill Cooke, a meteor-shower expert with the Space Environment Group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "There's no moon so conditions will be perfect—as long as you don't mind freezing a bit."

While most meteor showers are at their best only in the early morning hours, the Geminids aid the sleepy by appearing in good numbers before midnight.


Read the full story >>

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1210_041210_geminids.html

 

[forestgnome]

Definately the best meteor shower of this year. I was hoping to snowshoe out to a favorite ledge for the show but it was way too cloudy.
Early reports are saying about 100 per hour last night.

 

[Quietman]

I turned off the Christmas lights and watched them for half an hour after midnight. Saw a few nice ones but of course when my wife came out to see what I was doing, they stopped. So she said I was crazy and went back in. Didn't see many more but was a beautiful crisp night.

 

[woodstrider]

Thanks for the....

info. And Happy Trails

 

[weatherman]

Up high, but not on a mountain

Not knowing Monday night was a meteor shower night, I was on an airplane flying from Chicago to Boston at 33,000 feet and looked out the window... it was spectacular!!! No haze or clouds to contend with. I still saw them driving back to my house after leaving the city. And when I woke my wife, they stopped, just like Quietman. I think she thought I had too much to drink on the plane. Next Dec, I'll bring her for a headlamp hike and prove it.