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GEMINID METEOR SHOWER

14th December, 2022 Science and Technology

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Context

  • The famous Geminids meteor show is most likely to be seen late at night on December 13.

 

Meteor Shower 

  • meteor showeris a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories.
  • Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth's surface. Very intense or unusual meteor showers are known as meteor outburstsand meteor storms, which produce at least 1,000 meteors an hour, most notably from the Leonids.

Geminids

  • The Geminidsare a prolific meteor shower caused by the meteor 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be a Palladian asteroid with a "rock comet" orbit.
  • The Geminid meteor shower and the Quadrantids meteor shower are the only major showers not caused by a comet. When the Earth passes through the dusty trail left behind by the meteor 3200 Phaeton, some of the meteoroids left by the meteor burn up in our planet’s upper atmosphere, appearing to us as the Geminid meteor shower.
  • Geminids were first observed in 1862, much more recently than other showers such as the Perseids(36 AD) and Leonids (902 AD).

https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/science/geminids-geminid-meteor-shower-2022-8322005/