Geminids Meteor Shower - Viewing & Origin

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Yep, tonight is the night!

We have had crystal clear glass-like skies for the last 11 nights in a row

but tonight is cloudy

I just checked again and it apperas the wind is starting to clear the Eastern & North-Eastern horizon! Exactly where Gemini will rise

Blow wind, blow!!!

[fringe_dweller]

sigh, you have got to laugh dont you? - how many times have I seen a star trail pic used to illustrate a meteor shower in mainstream news its hard to be critical i spose, i'm just glad tonight its mainstream i suppose and getting a mention is something

[iluvsaturn (Garth)]

Absolutely beautiful clear skies up here 190 metres above sea level at Kariong, just returned from superb night with friends dining at Trevisanos use to be Zest(Giberto from Villa Sorgenti, now the restauranteur told me he retired with a vengeance) service and meals positively exemplary. Sitting back and waiting for the show!

[Meadehead]

Well, I saw three and then the clouds rolled in Doesn't look like it will clear up for any further viewing, too bad.

I hope you all had good luck and look forward to reading some reports.
Good night

[circumpolar (Matt)]

Clear skies over North Richmond.

Here's the picture.........
Myself, a 7 year old & a 10 year old, all in sleeping bags lying on a trampoline looking upwards.

Score...

7 y.o. - 49 meteors
10 y.o. - 42 meteors
me - 42 meteors

TOTAL - 133 meteors!

Not a bad effort for 2 hours. Started at 2am.

Most were medium to slow speeds. Many bright ones appeared blueish.
About 6 sporatics.

Kids are now tired so off to bed we go.

[glenc (Glen)]

I saw one very bright meteor moving to the right (east) above Regulus and Saturn. It was white, moving slowly and brighter than Mars, not a Geminid. Also saw about 10 faint meteors.

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Last night my Meteor capture camera (az 321° al 40° fov 48°) recorded 43 meteors. From it 4 were sporadic and the rest Geminids.
Brightest one had peak magnitude -1.7 and was visible for 1.4 seconds moving at 38 km/s.

[thorsdad]

Originally Posted by Karls48

Last night my Meteor capture camera (az 321° al 40° fov 48°) recorded 43 meteors. From it 4 were sporadic and the rest Geminids.
Brightest one had peak magnitude -1.7 and was visible for 1.4 seconds moving at 38 km/s.

Nice one Karl. Do you have a link where you could put the vid up, maybe youtube or something? Would be great to see.

We first set up in the front yard at 23:00 local time, at about 23:15, the missus (Sharon) saw one meteor starting near canis major (and brighter than it) moving south and ended up in carina somewhere. She described it as like a flare . Went for about 3 seconds. Damn, I missed that one.

I saw another nice one, slow moving started near orion moving south past canis major. No colour but could see a glowing head get bigger for a moment, then faded out, went for about 2 seconds.

At about 00:30, we moved to the back yard, a bit darker without the street lights. We saw a few more short streaks, some quick, some a bit slower from around the gemini, orion, near mars, and even a bit south near canis major. Some travelling north and south, and a few east and west.

All in all, we observed from about 23:00 to 02:00 when cloud started rolling in. We totalled about 13. Not huge, but our best meteor viewing session. And the best one of all was the one the Sharon saw at about 23:15. Sharon woke up about 04:00 and checked the conditions : Cloudy so we didn't bother getting up to observe. We'll try again tonight, raining at the moment, hopefully clears up.

Thanks for the reports guys

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

What a night !
I was out with a few other keen club members observing Geminids from our dark sky site 10km from town.
Between 10pm and 2am we saw 100's of Geminids
Our more northerly declination will have contributed to the number of meteors spotted.
We noticed that many of them started a long way from the radiant, only bursting to life behind us, as we looked 20 to 30 Deg above and beside the radiant.
This is the first time I have seen this shower as the Wet Season is usually beginning by this time of year, this time we got lucky

[casstony]

I guess not everyone gets excited to see a meteor shower - Two astronauts on the International Space Station will make a spacewalk next week to find out if a micrometeoroid strike damaged a critical part of the outpost's power system, officials said on Thursday.

[Starbuck]

Only managed to catch sight of about 4 behind very cloudy skies here

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Lucky bugga Ian

It was a clear night where I was (southern Sydney - and I saw a grand total of 2 between 23:00 and 01:00. Very disappointing at 34 degrees south.

Originally Posted by gaa_ian

What a night !
I was out with a few other keen club members observing Geminids from our dark sky site 10km from town.
Between 10pm and 2am we saw 100's of Geminids
Our more northerly declination will have contributed to the number of meteors spotted.
We noticed that many of them started a long way from the radiant, only bursting to life behind us, as we looked 20 to 30 Deg above and beside the radiant.
This is the first time I have seen this shower as the Wet Season is usually beginning by this time of year, this time we got lucky

[h0ughy (David)]

they were fantastic last night /this morning. I saw several bright ones and a lot of faint ones. well over 30 for the few hours I was out until 3 am

[edwardsdj (Doug)]

Saw many Geminids from Wivenhoe dam just West of Brisbane.

What was unusally was the high activitiy of what appeared to be a second radiant towards the East though (at least 10 per hour). Did anyone else see or record activity from this second radiant?

Many of the meteors from this second radiant left trains that persisted for a few seconds much like many of the Geminids I saw.

Have fun,
Doug

[Geoff-]

Originally Posted by edwardsdj

What was unusally was the high activitiy of what appeared to be a second radiant towards the East though (at least 10 per hour). Did anyone else see or record activity from this second radiant?

I was watching in Sydney around 3am and saw a few Geminids, and at least two meteors travelling at 90 degrees to the shower - heading east. One was pretty spectacular.

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Hi Doug, you got keen eyes. Yes, you are right some of what is accepted as Geminids meteors have actual radiant in anti-helion source. I noticed only because I use CCD camera to capture meteors and software that plots radiant.

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

I have decided to get myself one of those click counters so I can keep track of just how many meteors I am seeing !

[Astro78]

Buggar, we had to have our x-mas party on the 1st clear night in donkey's AND during the Meteor shower of the year!

Did see some interesting sights in the Cross about 4am but not in the sky.

[edwardsdj (Doug)]

Hi Karl,

Great to get some confirmation of this second radiant. A second radiant more or less overhead (from Brisbane) at midnight would explain everything I saw. It would also explain:

1. the meteors Geoff saw heading East at 90 degrees to the shower;
2. the meteors I saw deep in the South that I assumed were Geminids; and
3. the meteors seen by myself and Rob heading North.

I had assumed there was another radiant in the South causing me to see many meteors heading North against the Geminid stream. A second radiant overhead explains all of this.

If this is the case, this second radiant had far higher activity than the Geminids between about midnight and 1am from my location near Brisbane.

I would love to see a link to your video

Have fun,
Doug

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Hi Doug, sorry I don’t have web page. I got enough troubles to keep 4 computers running and don’t need another worry with Internet. Each video is around 30Mb and I got about thousand of them. If you are interested in video meteor capture have look on http://sonotaco.com/soft/e_index.html . Their program with unfortunate name UFOCapture and UFO Analyser is about the best meteor capture software I can find on the net. Demo will run without any restriction for 30 day. The software is not easy to use but if you persist it will make sense. It will calculate peak magnitude of meteor and if it comes from known radiant it will give you its speed, hight and distance from observing point. It will show meteor trail over the map of Australia and if you got data from two recording stations it will calculate and plot meteors orbit.
For other simple meteor capture solution have look on http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=20808&highlight=Me teor+capture+cheap