In mid-December, the sky with the Geminids offers the richest shooting star stream of the year. The association of star friends expects the peak with up to 150 meteors per hour on December 14 – however on the day around 2 p.m. The night before and the night after, shooting star hunters can still hope for 30 to 60 burning up objects in the night sky. Among them could also be particularly bright objects.
Numerous shooting stars are to be expected, especially in the night after the maximum. The advantage: Unlike the Perseids in summer, you don’t have to wait until after midnight. “As soon as it gets dark, you can look out for them curiously.”
According to the star friends, the earth’s satellite is also no obstacle with its light in the evening hours. The waning moon does not rise until around 9 p.m. on December 13 and after 10 p.m. on December 14. If you want to see the shooting stars, you have to look east in the evening.
According to the German Weather Service in Offenbach, however, the chances of a clear view are moderate due to the clouds. On the night of Thursday there will probably be a strip through the country from about the middle of Lower Saxony to the north. “The chance is greatest there,” said a meteorologist. The models are still uncertain here.
The Geminids appear to arise from the constellation of Gemini, after which they are named. It rises in the evening in the eastern sky and resembles an elongated rectangle with its two main stars, Castor and Pollux. The real reason for the shooting star shower, according to the Star Friends, is that the earth is crossing a cosmic cloud of dust. This probably comes from the minor planet Phaethon, which may have broken up and left debris in its orbit that is now burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.
With much fewer meteors, the Ursids will come between December 16th and 25th. They seem to come from the constellation Lesser Bears. You can see them all night long. At the peak on the night of the 21st to the 22nd, however, only about ten shooting stars per hour can be expected.
See in the video: It is an annual phenomenon in the sky in April: the meteor shower Lyrid. Stargazers in China capture these fascinating time-lapse images of the night sky with shooting stars.
