Sky gazers in the city and elsewhere in the country can watch a meteor shower display if clouds and light pollution do not play spoilsport.
Are you up for a light show? Then brace yourselves for the annual Geminid meteor shower that has almost arrived and it will put on a dazzling show for skywatchers when it peaks overnight on December 13 and 14, according to NASA.
Sky gazers in the city and elsewhere in the country can watch a meteor shower display if clouds and light pollution do not play spoilsport.
The Geminid meteor shower is expected to provide a celestial display and people will have to move out of the glare of city lights to a darker region, said director, M P Birla Planetarium, Debiprosad Duari.
When can you watch the meteor shower in India?
"This year, the Geminid meteor shower is predicted to peak on the night of December 13 and the early morning of December 14. The shower will start at around 10 pm on December 13 when the Gemini constellation will be visible in the north-eastern sky, a little above and right of the familiar Orion constellation," Duari said.
The shower is predicted to be at its maximum at around 2 am on December 14, when the Gemini constellation will be almost overhead and the number of meteors can reach up to 120 per hour, he said.
Why is it called the Geminid meteor shower?
Meteor showers are named after the location of the radiant, usually a star or constellation close to where they appear in the night sky. In case of the Geminid meteor shower, so named as the meteors appear to originate from the constellation of Gemini, it is not a comet but an unusual asteroid called 3200 Phaethon, discovered in 1983, the eminent scientist said.
Generally, the meteor shower associated with 3200 Phaethon, a 5.1 km piece of rock, peaks around second week of December. Some astronomers believe the asteroid may have undergone a collision with another object in the distant past to produce the stream of particles that Earth runs into -- creating the meteor shower.
What are meteor shower, meteoroids and meteors?
Rocks and dust particles from space which are about to collide with Earth's atmosphere are called meteoroids. And those that streak through the atmosphere are called meteors.
Generally, comets, which are chunks of ice having lots of dust come close to the Sun. By the sun's radiation, the ice melts and the dust and rocks are left behind along the orbit of the comet.
By friction in the atmosphere, the particles then burn up and give rise to not only a single bright streak in the sky but numerous meteors called meteor showers.
The Geminid meteor shower is expected to provide a celestial display and people will have to move out of the glare of city lights to a darker region, said director, M P Birla Planetarium, Debiprosad Duari.
The shower is predicted to be at its maximum at around 2 am on December 14, when the Gemini constellation will be almost overhead and the number of meteors can reach up to 120 per hour, he said.
Generally, the meteor shower associated with 3200 Phaethon, a 5.1 km piece of rock, peaks around second week of December. Some astronomers believe the asteroid may have undergone a collision with another object in the distant past to produce the stream of particles that Earth runs into -- creating the meteor shower.
Generally, comets, which are chunks of ice having lots of dust come close to the Sun. By the sun's radiation, the ice melts and the dust and rocks are left behind along the orbit of the comet.
By friction in the atmosphere, the particles then burn up and give rise to not only a single bright streak in the sky but numerous meteors called meteor showers.
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