Geminids meteor shower 2023: What is it? Best timing to watch. All you need to know

Stargazers rejoice the Geminids meteor shower reaches its peak this week. Have you ever seen a shooting star? If not, then tomorrow (14 December) a spectacular meteor shower will dazzle the sky. The Geminids meteor shower will occur on the evening of 14 December into the morning of 15 December.

Meteor showers are named for the constellation in which that radiant is found, so the Geminids radiate from a point in the constellation Gemini. While the Geminids are a reliable annual spectacle, this year is the ideal opportunity to head out and observe them. The peak of the shower this year occurs just at the time the Geminids are highest in the sky from Earth’s eastern longitudes, meaning that viewers have a perfect ringside seat for the best display of natural fireworks this year.

When and where to watch the Geminids meteor shower? Meteors can be seen in any part of the night sky, but if you trace the direction of their motion, they will always point back to that single point in the night sky — known as the meteor shower’s ‘radiant’. The good news is that the farther north you are, the higher in the sky the Geminid radiant will get over the course of the night and so the better view you will have. In Delhi, the perfect view of the meteor shower will be in the morning hours of Friday 15 December.

The Geminids will appear to be radiating from a point in the sky directly above you. At their peak, the Geminids have a zenithal hourly rate of around 150. So under perfect conditions, with the radiant directly overhead, you might expect to see two or three meteors per minute.

What makes the Geminid meteor shower so special? The Geminids are the most active of all the meteor showers the Earth encounters over the course of a year. Every December, our planet ploughs through the debris left behind by an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon — a potato-shaped lump of rock and metal around 5km in diameter, often described as a ‘rock comet’. Phaethon moves around the Sun on an extremely elongated orbit.

At its farthest from our star, it is well beyond the orbit of Mars, where Phaethon’s surface temperature likely falls below -100 degrees Celsius. At its nearest to the Sun, Phaethon is much closer than the orbit of Mercury, superheating its surface to temperatures over 700 degrees Celsius. These temperature extremes are enough to crack and shatter its surface rocks, as they expand and contract repeatedly.

As a result, Phaethon is continuously shedding dust — particularly when it is closest to the Sun. Over hundreds of years, that dust has accumulated, spreading around Phaethon’s orbit to create a vast, dusty tube in space. Every December, Earth runs right through this tube — and we get to enjoy the Geminid meteor shower.

The grains of dust from Phaethon hit our planet at tremendous speed — around 34 km per second. Those dust grains carry an incredible amount of energy. As they push deeper into Earth’s atmosphere, they superheat the air around them — creating a spectacular flash of light in the sky, or shooting star — with the resulting radiation totally vaporising the dust grain, a process known as ‘ablation’.

A typical meteor, as bright as the brightest stars, might be no more than a millimetre or two in diameter. Earth first enters the debris left behind by Phaethon around 19 November and doesn’t leave again until 24 December. But for most of that time, Earth is passing through the outskirts of Phaethon’s debris, and there are very few Geminid meteors streaking across our skies.

It’s when Earth reaches the centre of Phaethon’s debris stream on 14 and 15 December — where the dust is densest — that the number of visible meteors rises to a strong peak. So the best time to view the shower will be the evening of 14 December into the morning of 15 December, with the nights before and after also offering a good display of celestial fireworks. (With PTI inputs) Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world to know more.

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