[gaa_ian (Ian)]

A bit of a background on the Geminid Meteor Shower:
One of the brightest recurring meteor showers in the sky happens from the 7th to the 17th December.

What will you see and when ?

They are known as the Geminids, and this year, due to the just barely past New Moon, they should be a great sight to see.

For best viewing conditions, be prepared to stay up late, though. The shower will generally start at 9:30 PM local time, and peak a few hours later, around 1 AM, and then fall off over the next few hours.

To spot the Geminids, look about half a degree from the stars Castor and Pollux in the sky, the shoulders of the Twins, and you'll see shooting stars moving rapidly across the sky as fragments of dust and a few pebbles burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. At its peak on the 14th of December, the Geminids will produce anywhere from 100 to 140 "shooting stars" per hour.

The best way to view a meteor shower is to find a comfortable reclining lawn chair or picnic mat and pillow. Lay back and point your feet in the direction of the radiant, look above and around it, as the meteors can begin quite some distance from the radient.

What are they ?

The Geminids were first spotted in 1861, and have recurred (with varying intensity) every year there after.

Originally considered an anomaly, because they weren't associated with a comet (as was demonstrated with the Perseids), the Gemenids were eventually linked to a near earth object called 3200 Phaethon.

3200 Phaethon was found to have a very comet-like eccentric orbit with a period of 1.41 years, when it was discovered in 1983. Current thinking is that Phaethon is the dessicated husk of a comet that's lost all of its volatiles from close passes to the Sun (it gets to half the distance Mercury does at perihelion.)

3200 Phaethon is only visible to someone with a large telescope due to it's faintness. At its closest approach to earth, at 11 million kilometers, will be visible in the constellation Virgo. At only 5 km in diameter, and with a medium albedo, 3200 Phaethon will look like a 14.5 magnitude star. 3200 Phaethon is in the category of objects considered potential impact hazards to the Earth. At 5 km in diameter, it's roughly half the diameter of the Chixchulub impactor that seems to have ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Phaethon's other remarkable feature is that it approaches the Sun closer than any other cataloged asteroid. The surface temperature at its closest (perihelion) could reach approximately 1025 Kelvin.

This explains why it was named after the Greek mythological figure Phaëton, son of the sun god Helios.

3200 Phaethon will approach relatively close to the Earth on December 14, 2093, passing within 0.0198 AU (Astronomical Units) or 2.97 million km.