Tag archives for Meteor Shower
Posted by The yearly Geminid meteor shower will be dazzling tomorrow night, so ask your parents if you can stay up to check it out! The shower’s peak on the night of December 13 to the early hours of December 14 is expected to be a brilliant one, filled with colorful shooting stars. “The best times are probably before the moon rises, when it will be dark still,” said Geza Gyuk, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. The bright moon will make the fainter meteors harder to see.
Read more about the Geminid meteor shower on National Geographic News.
Want more stargazing? Find out how to have your own star party on National Geographic Kids.
Photograph by Jonathan Blair, Corbis
Scientists studying rock samples have evidence that gold was delivered to Earth’s surface by meteors! The evidence indicates that about 3.9 billion years ago, a huge “firestorm” of meteors brought gold and other precious metals to the planet.
Learn more about meteors and early days on Earth on National Geographic News.
Do you know your comet and meteor facts? Quiz Your Noodle and find out!
Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN
Tonight’s Geminid meteor shower may be the best meteor shower of the year. Scientists predict the shower will peak between 2 a.m. and dawn, so it’s probably past your bed time, but it may well be worth it. “The Geminids have been slowly getting better over the past years, making it one of the best showers,” Gyuk said. “And it has become very reliable, so we can expect a fairly nice show.”
Most yearly meteor showers happen when the Earth passes through a comet’s debris cloud. The Geminids are different, though. This shower is believed to come from a three-mile-wide (4.8 kilometers) asteroid-like space rock called Phaethon.
Read more about the meteor shower on National Geographic News.
How much do you know about comets and meteors? Quiz Your Noodle and find out!
Photograph by Wally Pacholka, TWAN
Every August, skywatchers look to the heavens to see the Perseids meteor shower. This shower peaks today, from about 3 p.m. ET to 2 a.m. ET tomorrow morning. The Perseids meteor shower is caused by the Earth passing through a debris field left by the Swift-Tuttle comet, which passes around the sun every 135 years. Swift-Tuttle’s last visit was in 1992.
To watch tonight’s display, head outside and lie down on the ground, or sit in a comfy chair and look up! Observers in Europe and North America will have the best show on this dark, moonless night. Scientists can’t predict what sort of show people will see, but some of the streaks may be bigger than others. “As the Earth passes through the dust trail of comets, it encounters debris from the size of grains of sand to [the size of] boulders,” said Raminder Singh Samra, resident astronomer at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Learn more about the Perseids on National Geographic News.
Learn how to go stargazing on National Geographic Kids.
Photograph by Michel Tournay, My Shot
