The Geminids peak every year in mid-December, scattering hundreds of bright meteors across northern winter skies. 'It's not what we thought it was.'Ībove: Geminids over the Czech Republic in 2018.

'Our work has upended years of belief about 3200 Phaethon, the source of the Geminids,' says co-author Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab. Apparently the same is true of meteor showers.Ī paper published in the Planetary Science Journal reports a surprising new twist in the mystery of the Geminids, a strong annual meteor shower that has puzzled astronomers for more than a century. More: Observing tips sky map.Įvery great mystery novel has an unexpected twist. 13-14 with as many as 100 meteors/hour visible from dark sky sites. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on Dec. 12-13, NASA cameras recorded 22 Geminid fireballs over the USA. THE GEMINID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is entering a stream of debris from 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. 28, 2023, as a show of thanks for years of service and hope for future daisies: Until then, we will maintain AIM's iconic 'daily daisy,' frozen at Feb. There may be some hope of a recovery as AIM's orbit precesses into full sunlight in 2024. As a result AIM is offline, perhaps permanently. What happened to NASA's AIM spacecraft, which has been monitoring NLCs since 2007? Earlier this year, the spacecraft's battery failed. As the season progresses, these dots will multiply in number and shift in hue from blue to red as the brightness of the clouds intensifies. For the rest of the season, daily maps from NOAA 21 will be presented here:Įach dot is a detected cloud. An instrument onboard NOAA 21 ( OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as 'polar mesospheric clouds' or PMCs). The first clouds were detected inside the Arctic Circle by the NOAA 21 satellite.

The northern season for NLCs began on May 26th. Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole could reach Earth on Dec. Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining-a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays. Credit: SDO/HMIĬosmic Rays Solar Cycle 25 is intensifying, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. Sunspot AR3513 has a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares.

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