Brilliant Geminid Meteor Shower To Light Up The Sky
BLOOMFIELD HILLS (WWJ) - Those who stay up a little late are in for quite a show, as the two nights will display the Geminid Meteor Shower.
WWJ Newsradio 950's Sandra McNeil spoke with Ray Bullock, an educator at the Cranbrook Institute of Science Astronomy Department.
"On any clear night you can see an occasional shooting star -- a little streak of light that zips across the sky," Bullock said. "But at certain times of the year the earth passes through a stream of debris that's orbiting around the sun, generally the remains of a comet, and, as a result we see more shooting stars than usual."
Bullock said, on average, the Geminid Meteor Shower produces 50 to 60 shooting stars every hour -- about one per minute.
He said with the moon in its invisible new phase, the shower should be especially vivid.
"It's helpful, too, if you can get away from the light-polluted skies of the city. The farther out in the country you go you'll have darker skies and then you can see the fainter meteors," he said.
Bullock said the best view will be in the eastern sky between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.
NASA will be streaming live video of the shower online at this link.
(Read more about the Geminid Meteor Shower from CBSNews, here).
