Geminid meteor shower to light up sky over weekend, moon to dim show

Only 10-20 nights every year have showers reaching 20 meteors an hour, so the show is still worth braving the December chill, especially since the Geminids are often bright and intensely colored.

By TZVI JOFFRE
A Geminids meteor shower is seen above the mountain range in Nagarkot. 2017 (photo credit: NAVESH CHITRAKAR/REUTERS)
A Geminids meteor shower is seen above the mountain range in Nagarkot. 2017
(photo credit: NAVESH CHITRAKAR/REUTERS)
The Geminid meteor shower, one of the two strongest meteor showers in the year, will light up the skies on Friday night, although an almost full moon will somewhat dim the show from its usual 60+ meteors per hour to about 20 per hour.
According to the International Meteor Organization, only 10-20 nights every year have showers reaching 20 meteors an hour, so the show is still worth braving the December chill, especially since the Geminids are often bright and intensely colored.
The peak of the shower is on the night between Friday the December 13 and Saturday December 14, with the best times to watch being around 6 p.m. and about 2 a.m. There won't be so many meteors at 6 p.m., but at that point the shower may produce earthgrazers, which streak slowly and horizontally across the sky, according to EarthSky. Earthgrazers are fairly rare.
If the night sky is cloudy on Friday, the shower will also be good Thursday night and Saturday night. You'll want to watch the skies for at least an hour, as it takes about 20 minutes for your eyes to get adjusted to the dark and meteors show up in relatively sporadic bursts.
To increase your chances of spotting meteors, keep away from your phone for at least 30 minutes to allow your eyes to adjust to the dark, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Also get as far away as you can from light pollution. While isolated spots far from lights such as the Ramon Crater in Israel's South are usually excellent spots for stargazing and meteor showers, religious Jews may have trouble finding a dark spot as on Shabbat it is forbidden to go too far outside the city limits of wherever you are located. However, the phone issue will most likely not be an issue for those who observe the laws of Shabbat.
Although the Geminids' radiate from around the star Castor in the constellation Gemini, meteors won't necessarily show up just from there as they appear in all parts of the sky.
The weather in Israel will be frigid so bundle up if you go out to see the stars. In Jerusalem, the low will reach 48⁰F (9⁰C) and the high will only peak at 55⁰F (13⁰C). Tel Aviv will be somewhat more manageable with a low of 55⁰F (13⁰C) and a high of 66⁰F (19⁰C). Modi'in and Beit Shemesh will range between 53⁰F (12⁰C) and 62⁰F (17⁰C). For those who make it to Mitzpe Ramon, the low will be 48⁰F (9⁰C) and the high will be 57⁰F (14⁰C). Intermittent cloud cover may cover the skies, so be prepared for the possibility disrupted star gazing.
The Geminids are spawned from the debris of the rock comet 3200 Phaethon. Earth crosses the orbital path of the rock comet every December, causing the debris from the object to smash into the planet's upper atmosphere at about 80,00 miles (130,000 km.) per hour and become the Geminid meteors. As of Sunday, 3200 Phaethon is over 141,548,357 miles (227,800,000 km.) away from Earth.
The Perseid meteor shower, which usually produces 80 shooting stars an hour, was also dulled by an almost full moon when it peaked in August.
In another stellar news, 2I Borisov, an interstellar comet and only the second object ever observed that originated outside our solar system, will pass by Earth later this month. The comet made its closest approach to the Sun on Sunday and will fly by Earth at a distance of 180 million miles (about twice the distance from the Earth to the Sun) on December 28.

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The comet may reach a peak brightness of about magnitude 15, meaning it may be visible in 8- or 10-inch telescopes around December 20. The comet may disintegrate while passing the sun, according to Space.com. The comet may also become much brighter and more visible.
The first interstellar object observed was Oumuamua, a rod-shaped comet without a tail from outside the solar system, according to The New York Times. Oumuamua faded away as it traveled out of sight. “Nothing about Borisov is weird,” said Dr. Gregory Laughlin, a Yale astronomer, to the Times. “With Oumuamua, everything was weird.”
While 2I Borisov's tail is 100,000 miles long, the nucleus is only a mile across.


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