Hi Erick and 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
on this page they have it as
'December 7 —17; Maximum: December 14, 10h45m UT'
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!
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!?
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
I won't see my back fence tonight, let alone the sky. Cough!
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
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 cant win 'em all
knit one purl one, knit one purl, knit one purl one, knit one purl one...
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
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
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
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?
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.
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?
Sun rises - a faint red disc!
cant win 'em all
