Allow me to wax cosmic: There are certain events that take us outside of ourselves. Big ones, dwarfing our most significant human travails. Events where we look up for a moment and submit to the understanding that we’re part of a stupefying stellar picture, passing through a heavens so overwhelming that we’re simply owned – and there’s nothing to do but watch and accept our role in the show. Beautiful stuff.

I’m talking solar and lunar eclipses. I’m talking comets. And I’m talking meteor showers, the most intense of which is about to make its annual clockwork appearance, erupting out of Gemini early next week to the delight of night-sky devotees who never miss its arrival. The Earth, says NASA, “will pass through the Geminid debris stream, producing as many as 120 meteors per hour over dark-sky sites.” The shower will peak probably between midnight and sunrise on Tuesday, “when the Moon is low and the constellation Gemini is high overhead, spitting bright Geminids across a sparkling starry sky.” (See NASA waxes, too.)

The thing about the Geminids is that they’re unlike other meteor showers in that their “shooting stars” do not come from our passing through the tail of a comet, but rather from a “weird rocky object” called 3200 Phaethon. This smallish rock with an odd orbit is believed to have come from an impact event with asteroid called Pallas. In any event, there’s a ton of strange and unique features to this show, many of which remains a mystery to scientists. Its big deal, though, is, well, its bigness.

“Of all the debris streams Earth passes through every year, the Geminids’ is by far the most massive,” says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke. “When we add up the amount of dust in the Geminid stream, it outweighs other streams by factors of 5 to 500.” Says the NASA site: “This makes the Geminids the 900-lb gorilla of meteor showers.”

So go. Watch. Obey the heavens and enjoy the show.

Images: Dr. Rawhead, St0rmz, Nasa Images, Navicore, Noel Feans

The post Heads Up, the Geminids are Coming! appeared first on EcoSalon.

Over the next few months, as winter wanes and the night air warms up enough to be comfortably breathed, it’s time to stand in the garden and watch the sky fall.

It’s not difficult to see how meteoroids got their nickname of shooting stars, even if the term couldn’t be less accurate. These lumps of icy gravel (cast-offs from comets powering around our solar system) rain against our planet in a slow, steady drizzle for much of the year, and unless you are remarkably lucky, there’s not much to see. But every few months, the earth passes through the dusty trail of a fragmenting comet – and we’re treated to the celestial firework display known as a meteor shower.

It’s the perfect excuse to grab a warming drink, wrap up well, and sit – or even lie – in your back garden until your eyes become accustomed to the dark. Because meteoroids move on parallel paths, they appear to be radiating from the same point of the sky – it’s the same perspective trick as when you are standing on railway tracks that seem to converge in the distance. Watching for meteors is a job for the more light-sensitive corners of your eyes – most of the time all you’ll glimpse is an after-image of a livid scratch of light across the dark sky, on the very edge of your perception. It’s hypnotically calming and it hones your senses.

So what can we expect from meteor showers in 2009? The best displays for North American observers are:

The Lyrids (mid April).

The Perseids (early August) – the most famous, and often the most beautiful.

The Orionids – caused by the passage of Halley’s Comet, and streaking across the sky in late October.

The Leonids (mid November) – spectacular in history, and a little unpredictable (although the heaviest storms come in 33-year cycles). Remarkable images include this one taken from an aircraft at 40,000 feet.

The Geminids (mid December). Appearing to fly out of the constellation Gemini (hence their name), the rather weird Geminids are regarded as one of the meteor-shower highlights of the year.

For the hardened stargazer, there are other less easily-spotted showers to tax the senses – SkyTour lists the full 2009 itinerary. And as eccentric as it may seem, reclining on the ground is a good way to watch – no amount of yoga (or mulled wine) will unkink the crick in your neck from a long, mesmerized night of craning your head back.

Images: jurvetson / johndan / typicalnaloboy

The post The Best Places to See Meteor Showers in 2009 appeared first on EcoSalon.