On the night of the 13 December, and the morning of the 14 December, the Geminid shooting star shower reaches its peak.
The Earth will be ploughing through a stream of debris left behind by asteroid Phaethon, and we see these fragments burn up as they hit the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the shooting stars.
And they are often big fragments! I myself saw a huge fireball in the UK during the Geminid shower of 1994.
More details can be found at the NASA science website.
Details of all the major annual meteor showers visible from the UK are available on the NMM website.
No comments.