Geminid meteor shower 2006

[fringe_dweller]

Hi Erick and welcome! :welcome:
With meteors showers, if in doubt, I always go to the IMO site here
http://www.imo.net/calendar, they are the last word in this sort of thing, if they cant get it right, than lord help us :rolleyes:
on this page they have it as
'December 7 —17; Maximum: December 14, 10h45m UT'

here (scroll down page) http://www.imo.net/calendar/2006/fall

being as we are in the far east we are 10 or so hours ahead of that time (depending where we live in this great land of course) and daylight saving, that makes their peak time around 9 pm-ish for us on the 14th, so the night evening of 14th/morning of 15th local time seems the go.
And seeing the waning moon rises that bit later on morning of 15th dec, thats the pick for sure.
Your right mate, with the Gem's the radiant rises just after 11 pm or so, for our latitude, unlike say the famous Leonids, which is one of the latest of all, radiant rise wise, rising at around 3 am (which is were the Very early morning/dawn thing/prerequisite comes from, partly) for our latitudes.

So midnight till 2 am looks nice eh - and the darker your site, the better with meteors dont forget. with the 31% illuminated moon rising not long after 2 am, still might be some nice action even with the moon up, ya never know in this pursuit! :) specially if look at the sky in the opposite direction to the moon, or block it out with a tree or hill ect. that can work well sometimes, least you have some of your night vision left over?
HTH!

[iceman]

Cheers for the info Kearn, great stuff.

[erick]

Thanks fringe-dweller, that's just what I needed. Weather permitting, it should be ideal! Eric :)

[erick]

Update - weather forecast is looking .................................. depressing. :cloudy:

[stephenmcnelley]

Hey that link could fire up any BBQ fringe_dweller.

[fringe_dweller]

not looking crash hot here either, looks like Oz is just one big picnic blanket suffering from an attack of the black trough ants lately - CREEPY! :rolleyes:

look at tuesdays maps, thats mental! :scared:

here's to clear skies for all!! :thumbsup:

[fringe_dweller]

:lol: :help:

[fringe_dweller]

I guess there's always the chance for one or two nice Geminid earthgrazers between dusk/early evening and 11 or 12 pm - here's hopin anyway, - cant remember the gem peak lining up to favour any oz time zones for a while?, could be good!? :)

[erick]

Still is depressing for the night of 14/15 - rain! But great for the fire effort.

So, I says to myself, I'll go out the night of 13/14 and see what I can see - should be something. Weather forecast is for clear skies.

Get up early this morning to go to the gym - that's funny, the moon is red! And where is Saturn? Oh no! Smoke again! :( Sun rises - a faint red disc!

Hmmmm.... no meteor watching tonight.

What was that someone said about taking up knitting? :)

[erick]

I won't see my back fence tonight, let alone the sky. Cough! :(

Kearn, in your experience, what do you think Friday night will be like - a day after predicted peak. From what I read, the Geminids may continue as long as that? Weather forecast is good and rain tomorrow may remove the smoke. Thanks Eric

[fringe_dweller]

:lol: :) Hi Eric, some rain would be pretty handy wouldnt it! hope its not just clouds tho. Still looking bad (astronomy wise) for us still to.

and yes days/nights either side of a peak are often pretty decent, I guess on average sometimes, depends tho, I would expect, as much as, even half the rates observable on the peak night could be possible :thumbsup:

Now we have a X3 solar flare gunning our way (launched at 0240 UT on Dec. 13th - so around lunch time today - wednesday) and they take between 12 and 48 hours to arrive, we could of had some nice auroae in the south to compliment some nice meteors tonight/tomorrow night- oh well :sadeyes: cant win 'em all

knit one purl one, knit one purl, knit one purl one, knit one purl one...

[fringe_dweller]

hey BOM changed our local weather for thursday night (unfortunately drought wise) - might be ok for us skygazers after all :)

[gaa_ian]

Saw one bright Geminid last night at 11pm, but nothing this morning due to thunderstorms in the Area. Will look again tonight though !

[erick]

Not tonight, Josephine! 'Tis raining in Melbourne - which is bad news and good news at the same time. Perhaps Friday night?

[ballaratdragons]

Geez I hope these clouds part tonight. I have the night off because of a work injury and I wanna see some Meteors and Auroras to make my injury worthwhile :lol:

[JethroB76]

We may get lucky in Launceston, looks like the clouds and smoke may be clearing:D

[gaa_ian]

Looks like no Geminids for us tonight.
Full on Thunder storms !
The Wet Season has begun :eyepop:

[stephenmcnelley]

After work today i felt to lazy to drag the outfit out, so spent 40 minutes looking around with the 9x63's under near perfect skies- bliss, it is star clusters galore this time of year.

Saw a couple of potential Geminids, arising from Gemini and almost making it to Capricornus. I could only describe them as being like mini Leonids in every way, about 1/3 slower too.
The first was at about 9.21pm AEST and again at around 9.35 pm.
Might have got lucky again..lol

[fringe_dweller]

sorry to hear of unhelpful skies some are having!
- well that was an interesting little show, managed to (eventually) get some clear sky at a country locale, and observed from about 12:40 till 2:25 am local time, had mostly 60% cloud free skies, far from perfect conditions, had to watch from close to a town, closer than I normally would.

Saw many meteors despite this, as it was impromtu and I was actually after aurora shots, so didnt take notes. The band of the summer milky way was fairly easy to see before the moon rose, an easy HUGE step up from my backyard for sure.

saw maybe 30 or so meteors in the 1.5 and a bit hours, of which maybe 9 or 10 were bright ones, in the 0 to -2 mag category, and which mostly covered large parts of the sky with nice glowing wakes :thumbsup:
saw a nice little cluster flurry of really obvious shortish gems in quicktime close to radiant at one point, thats always a treat! and a very pretty green gem at another point.

how many of the 30 or so were gems?, well maybe 20, including just about all the bright ones, cant be sure, had trouble with large trees in view at my emergency spot, in mentally plotting some meteors, some seemed to be orionids or alpha monoceritids! impossible and weird!, but all generally eminating close to gem radiant, so they must of been gems? :help: :lol:

[CoombellKid]

I had a nice night out this way last night, There were quite a few meteors.
So many infact I had to look up what shower might be causing it, And found
Geminid's were active, which I didn't know about. I went out about 12:30
and counted probably 30 in the first 20 minites. There were the odd fireball
but nothing too spectacular.

regards,CS sunny days

Rob

[fringe_dweller]

:thumbsup: Nice report Rob, your rough count matches with some of more favoured latitudes reports I have seen, at least 50 gems an hour, with many brightish ones, was common.

[Chrissyo]

I saw about 7 or so meteors last night whilst catching a few avis of Saturn. Some of them were nice long ones too:thumbsup: To be honest, I wasn't expecting to see any! I might try some star trail pictures next meteor shower to catch some of them.

[fringe_dweller]

Hey! and I accidentally saw saturn while watching the meteors :P I was thinking, whats that funny constellation where leo is supposed to be? :) just as it rose from behind clouds - second time it caught me momentarily this year lol
I had a camera/tripod with me, but was quicly frozen solid by the windchill out there at the time, and was to annoyed from all the driving i'd had to do to just to get under a hole, and the dodgy spot i had to view from :rolleyes: :lol: talk about grumpy old astronomers!

look forward to some meteor pics from you one day Chrissyo!

[stephenmcnelley]

Yes FD saturn is persistent!

[erick]

Meteor shower? What meteor shower?? I saw nothin' :(

Forecast - mostly clear for half the night, wind 8km/hr, 14 deg C.

I set up at my dark sky spot, did a bit of looking around waiting for the radiant to rise. Light cloud passing by most of the time. Had my last (I think) look at Andromeda for the year. Wind chill - Ouch! - and 20x80s bouncing around in the breeze. Couple of meteors spotted from the corner of my eye.

Then a visit from the local law enforcement officers. Happy as long as I wasn't lighting fires! Nothing like a police searchlight to destroy one's night vision!

Settled back as the radiant rose. And watched, and watched - for 30 min, no meteors - then the cloud rolled in and that was that!

Not all a waste, however. Saturn rose under the cloud line and I saw it through my 20x80s for the first time. If I didn't know what the rings looked like, I'd be as confused as Galileo! But I could make out the abnormal shape and imagine what I was seeing. I look forward to seeing Saturn again under better conditions.

Better luck next meteor shower.:)

[jjjnettie]

I had the scope out to show hubby a few DSO's, but after spotting about 8 meteors in fairly quick succession, we just spread out the tarp instead and enjoyed the show.
Knew it had to be a shower but didn't know which one.

[fringe_dweller]

LOL Erick, wow! a run-in with the law whilst hiding in the dark bushes observing a mysterious non-existant meteor shower with a pair of extremely large Binoculars in hand, how did that go down? :lol: cool :thumbsup: you got a great story out of it at least :)

I dont know if this is any consolation mate ;) but seeing nothing is as scientifically important as seeing something! :P
I did read one other similar report from the US, with similar title thread to yours - something like 'Geminids, Ha! - they shut down fast didnt they!! - we need more showers like the recent Orionids, went for three or four days! some great pics/avi of it from Avandonk in here.



well there's two contrasting experiences! sounds like it was a great night JJJ!! :)
cheers