Geminids 2018: what time, how and where to see the rain of stars this night
Where to see the geminids in every city of Spain? The best places to observe the parade of stars
The Geminids, the fragments of an asteroid
The Geminids, probably the best ‘star rain’ of the year if it were not because it takes place in December and tends to be marred by bad weather, will have its peak this week, during the early morning hours of Thursday to Friday. And if you are things you are always, there is Google to remind it with one of its doodle, this time with a series of illustrations that tell you why this phenomenon occurs.
This kind of shows, popularly called ‘rain of stars’, occur when the Earth crosses the orbit of a comet, stellar objects that are leaving a wake of gas and dust that enter the earth’s atmosphere disintegrate and shine.
The case of the Geminids is “very special” because this meteor shower does not come from a comet but from an asteroid, Phaeton, (for Phaethón, the son of Helios, god of the Sun), a comet exhausted without volatile elements that was discovered in 1983.
Phaeton, which measures 5,10 kilometers, is about the Sun every 1.4 years, but it is, also, the asteroid that is closest to the sun of all the known, more so even than the planet Mercury, an approach that makes some of its waste to burn, forming the tail of gravel which gives rise to the meteor shower.
The geminids, like the famous Perseids of summer, are one of the shows “most brilliant and regular of the year and is worth trying to observe them”, explains to Efe, the astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory (OAN), Mario Tafalla.
“If the weather is fine, this year is a good year to see the meteor shower because the Moon is in crescent phase, which means that it will not be very bright,” he says.
How to see the meteor geminids
Although the rain of meteors began the day 4 of December, this astronomical phenomenon recorded its maximum during the early morning of Thursday (13) Friday (14) of December, at which time it will be able to see “one or two meteors per minute, although the rain will be observable until day 17.
in order To enjoy it you need only to have a good view and look up at the sky past midnight, and in the opposite direction to the Moon (to avoid its brightness and improve the contrast).
This rain of stars appears to arise from the constellation of Gemini, from which it takes its name, but “what is certain is that the show is seen all over the sky, you do not even need to know where is that constellation,” says the astronomer.
During the night of Friday, from 22:30 local time, this meteor shower can be viewed live from the Observatorio del Teide (Tenerife) through sky-live.tv a channel also be broadcast live footage from the Observatory of High-Energy HESS (Namibia) and from the municipality of Olivenza (Badajoz).
three transmissions are part of the Initiatives against the Light Pollution of the european project STARS4ALL, which has the objective of defending the right to a dark sky and denounce the tremendous impact of light pollution around the world.
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