Two to three meteors per minute on a completely clear night

With clear skies, a meteor shower can be seen tonight, the culmination of the Geminids, an annual meteor shower. “Early this morning you could already see about one meteor per minute,” says astronomer Rob van den Bergh of the Sonnenburg Observatory in Utrecht.

According to the astronomer, it peaks this afternoon. “But then you can’t see anything because it’s light,” he says. “Tonight around 10:30 you are likely to see a lot of them. If you put a chair facing east, wear warm clothes and be patient, you might see two or three meteors a minute.

sand storm

He says the large number of stars and meteorites is due to some kind of dust storm. They are all tiny dust particles that come from Phaeton, a slowly collapsing asteroid. Those crumbs that come from there always cross the Earth’s orbit around the 14th of December, and those dust particles cause meteors.

This annual phenomenon seems to be getting bigger every year, and that’s due to the sun, according to van den Berg. Phaeton gets closer to the sun every year. This cracks the surface and creates more dust. The astronomer believes that in a century the amount of dust will decrease again. “So we still have some time to see such a beautiful meteor.”

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