VietNamNet Bridge – On the night of December 15, Vietnamese people will have the opportunity to observe Geminids - the largest meteor shower of the year, with the extreme frequency of up to 100 tracks per hour.

Geminids - the largest meteor shower of the year.

The Geminids meteor shower occurs annually between December 4-17. According to the International Meteor Organization (IMO), the culmination of this year's meteor shower will occur at around 18h UTC on December 14, or 1am on December 15 in Vietnam.

"The time of the best observations in Vietnam is on the night of December 14 and the early morning of December 15 with frequency from 50 to 100 spots per hour. In the ideal conditions, we can observe up to 120 tracks per hour," said Dang Tuan Duy, from the Club of HCM City Amateur Astronomers.

The heart of the meteor shower is the Gemini. This constellation rises gradually from the east at about 8pm and gets higher gradually until the early morning of the next day.

According to Duy, the viewer can start watching the meteor from about 10pm until dawn. "This year the moon sets down in the western horizon after dark, leaving the sky dark enough for observing the meteor," said Duy.

The Geminid shower apparently debuted in 1862 when English observer R. P. Greg noticed a new meteor radiant in Gemini active between December 10-12.

By the 1870s, more and more astronomers began observing the shower and making counts. Although they “tiptoed in” at first with maximum of 20 meteors per hour in the late 1890s, the shower ramped up to 50 per hour by the 1930s and 80 per hour in the 1970s. Now it’s over 100.

Most showers are spawned by bits and pieces of dust and debris that drift away from an active comet to create a stream of orbiting debris. When Earth’s path intersects the stream, dust strikes the atmosphere, heats up and creates a glowing tube of ionized air overhead we call a meteor.

The parent of the Geminids was finally tracked down in the 1980s. It turned out to be an asteroid — 3200 Phaethon. Debris released by the asteroid, perhaps during its routine close approaches to the Sun, make the Geminids one of only two major showers (the other is the January Quadrantids) to originate from an asteroid.

Geminids meteor shower 2014 in pictures:

Meteors observed from Wight Island, UK.          Meteors observed from London. In Sofia, Bulgari.          Meteor in Buckinghamshire, the UK.          On the island of Vancouver, Canada.            In the city of Skopje, Macedonia.              In Kathleen, Georgia, USA

Linh Nhat