This Sunday, Dec. 13, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will broadcast a live stream of the 2015 Geminid meteor shower. Anticipated to bring up to 100 meteors per hour visible in the night sky, the NASA stream — weather permitting — will offer the meteor shower as seen by NASA’s All Sky camera network, as well as interviews and commentary by NASA researchers related to meteors and comets. The event will air from 11 p.m. EST (10 p.m. CST) Dec. 13, until 3 a.m. EST (2 a.m. CST) on Dec. 14.
NASA experts will include Dr. Bill Cooke, Danielle Moser and Rhiannon Blaauw, all of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, located at Marshall. They will provide on-air commentary, as well as answer questions, live, on the Marshall Twitter account. Viewers and NASA followers interested in joining the online conversation can tweet meteor questions to “@NASA_Marshall” or simply tag their tweets with the hashtag “#askNASA.”
The Geminid meteor shower occurs due to small pieces of debris from an object called 3200 Phaethon. Long thought to be an asteroid, Phaethon is now classified as an extinct comet. In mid-December, as Earth orbits the Sun, it passes through a stream of debris from 3200 Phaethon. This debris stream causes meteors to appear to come from the constellation Gemini. Typically, the best viewing will be in the hours just before dawn local time.
View the live broadcast:
www.nasa.gov/nasatv
http://www.ustream.tv/NASAHDTV
More information on NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office:
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/meo/home/
For the latest in “Watch the Sky” news:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/watchtheskies/
