1 week ago •
Full Moon Geminids
The dependable annual Geminid meteor shower will be near its peak tonight (December 13/14) and before tomorrow's dawn. As Earth crosses through the dusty trail of active asteroid 3200 Phaethon the meteors will flash through the sky from the shower's radiant in Gemini. Gemini will be pretty easy for skygazers to find too as it won't be far from a nearly full waning gibbous Moon. You don't have look at the shower's radiant to see meteors though. The almost full moonlight won't hide the brightest of the Geminids from view either, but it will substantially reduce the rate of visible meteors for those who are counting. In fact, the 2019 Geminids should look a lot like the 2016 meteor shower This composite image from the 2016 Geminids aligns individual short exposures to capture many of the brighter Geminid meteors, inspite of a Full Moon shining near the constellation of the Twins. Along the horizon are the Teide Observatory's Solar Laboratory (right) and the Teide volcano on the Canary Island of Tenerife.
Related content
Mercury in Silhouette The small, dark, round spot in this solar close up is planet Mercury. In the high resolution telescopic image, a colorized stac...
1 week ago
M16 and the Eagle Nebula A star cluster around 2 million years young surrounded by natal clouds of dust and glowing gas, M16 is also known as The Eag...
1 week ago
The Star Streams of NGC 5907 Grand tidal streams of stars seem to surround galaxy NGC 5907. The arcing structures form tenuous loops extending more t...
1 week ago
Young Stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud How do stars form? To help find out, astronomers created this tantalizing false-color composition of dust clou...
1 week ago
Milky Way over Uruguayan Lighthouse Can a lighthouse illuminate a galaxy? No, but in the featured image, gaps in light emanating from the Jose Ignac...
1 week ago