Misconstrued Thoughts : Yesterday's Misconstrued Thoughts Today

"It's the Geminid meteor shower," says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "Start watching on Thursday evening, Dec. 13th, around 10 pm local time," he advises. "At first you might not see very many meteors—but be patient. The show really heats up after midnight and by dawn on Friday, Dec. 14th, there could be dozens of bright meteors per hour streaking across the sky."

Under normal conditions on the night of maximum activity, with ideal dark-sky conditions, at least 60 to 120 Geminid meteors can be expected to burst across the sky every hour on the average. (Light pollution greatly cuts the numbers.)

The Geminids begin to appear noticeably more numerous in the hours after 10 p.m. local time, because the shower's radiant is already fairly high in the eastern sky by then. The best views, however, come around 2 a.m., when their radiant point will be passing very nearly overhead.

The Geminids are not ordinary meteors. While most meteor showers come from comets, Geminids come from an asteroid—a near-Earth object named 3200 Phaethon.

So the annual Geminid Meteor Shower will be tonight. Well technically tomorrow morning. If you head out and watch between midnight and sunrise you may get a good show. Its possible you may get as many as hundred per hour.

So go out and freeze your buns off.. lose some sleep and enjoy the natural wander!

Oh and if you wanna really calculate how many you can expect, check out thttp://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.htmlhis site.

You can figure out for every meteor shower coming up when you should go look outside!