You'll have to get up super early this weekend to catch the best glimpse of Australia's best meteor shower before the Sun rises.
There will be slim window this year to catch this year's Geminid meteor shower given an almost full Moon.The annual shower, which is formed when the Earth moves through the debris of a weird asteroid called 3200 Phaethon ,"This is a meteor shower that in a normal year will give you the most meteors per hour. They're the strongest annual shower," says Jonti Horner, an astronomer at the University of Southern Queensland.
Don't worry if you don't know your stars; you'll find Pollux sitting between Jupiter and Mars this year."The higher in the sky the radiant gets, the better your view will be," Professor Horner says. But 2024 brings the extra challenge of a nearly full Moon that will make it difficult to catch the meteors for most of the night."It's best to look in the early hours of the morning before dawn rather than looking before midnight."but they will compete with the sky getting lighter from the rising Sun.
The table below gives estimates for what you can expect to see in clear dark skies at different latitudes of Australia, allowing for the angle of the radiant and some light coming from the Moon low in the sky.Tips on how to spot the meteor shower"Everyone will be different. You might want to get up really early and go back to sleep after the show or get up later and stay up."
Geminids Skygazing Phaethon Asteroid Comet
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