Geminid Meteor Shower to Peak Thursday, Friday Nights

Where and when to look for the last major meteor shower of 2012.

The Geminid meteor shower 2012, the final major meteor shower of every year and likely to be the best, peaks overnight this Thursday and Friday, and you may be able to see a great show on either side of those dates. NASA reports that the Geminids are a relatively young meteor shower, with the first sightings occurring in the 1830s with rates of about 20 per hour. Over the decades the rates have increased, regularly spawning between 80 and 120 per hour at its peak on a clear evening. Earthsky.org reports the Geminids peak might be around 2 a.m. on Thursday and Friday, because that’s when the shower’s radiant point is highest in the sky as seen around the world. "With no moon to ruin the show, 2012 presents a most favorable year for watching…

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Since You Didn't Ask

My Daily Bread

Paying tribute to the sky.

My first Virginia rainbow came not here in Ashburn but in Herndon. I went out to my daughter’s driveway after a misty rain, looked east, and there it was, spectacular, a perfect arc of color that supposedly told Noah the worldwide flood was over and would never be repeated. Rainbows are a rare sight here in northern Virginia, in this case rare enough to bring the whole family out in the drizzle to marvel at it. The reason for rainbows, however, is meteorological rather than transcendent: They always appear in the direction opposite the sun, when the air has enough moisture to refract its light and separate visible light into its constituent colors. When I lived in England, where raining is a way of life, rainbows occurred almost weekly and…

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