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Heavenly spectacular: Geminid meteor shower lights up the night skies with up to 100 shooting stars an hour

A spectacular meteor shower lit up the skies last night with 100 shooting stars an hour as the celestial firework display reached its fiery peak.

Sky-watchers across the world braved freezing temperatures to enjoy the Geminid meteor shower after astronomers said the weather conditions were close to perfect for the annual spectacle.

The meteor shower was visible in both hemispheres and was spotted from Skopje in Macedonia to Washington in the US because of the clear skies. 

At their height, the Geminids produce between 50 and 100 shooting stars every hour and they can be seen glowing in multiple colours with occasional rapid bursts of two or three.

Robin Scagell, vice-president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: ‘It should be a good display, weather permitting – we might not be far off perfect conditions in the UK.

Meteor showers occur when the Earth ploughs through clouds of cometary dust. Geminids are debris from an extinct three-mile-wide comet called 3200 Phaethon, which was previously believed to be an asteroid, according to NASA.

‘Basically it is the rocky skeleton of a comet that lost its ice after too many close encounters with the sun,’ NASA said on its website. But it has an eccentric orbit that looks more like that of a comet than an asteroid and brings it well inside the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, every 1.4 years.

Traditionally asteroids are made of rock and comets mostly of ice, but NASA describes Geminids as a type of ‘rock comet’.

The Geminid meteor shower was first noted in the 1860s, but over time it has become more intense.

There were 20 comets per hour reported in the 1920s, rising to 50 in the 1930s, 60 in the 1940s and 80 in the 1970s. 

Another unusual feature of the Geminids is that they can shine in different colours. Mostly glowing white, they may also appear yellow, blue, green or red.

At its closest upcoming approach on December 14 2093, the object will be 1,812,640 miles away – quite far enough to be safe.

Photographer John Baker captured the heavenly display over the spectacular wilderness in Dartmoor, Devon. ‘It was absolutely magnificent. The smaller meteors can be fairly common but the bigger ones are rarer and some of the bigger ones were just stunning. The combination of the iconic landscape and the spectacular display was just mesmerising.’

source: Daily Mail

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