Saturday: 8 December 2007
I realize it’s a bit early to remind everyone but my track record on remembering to do so closer to date isn’t so great. So don’t forget the Geminids meteor shower on Thursday night/Friday morning (Dec 13/14).
This page has a good locator description and very nice historical background on the meteor shower, destined someday to vanish forever. Unlike the source of most debris trails that cause meteors, trail comes not from a comet but probably an asteroid.
Unlike the Leonids and Perseids whose radiants rise very late, the constellation Gemini is well up in the east by 10pm (anyone’s time). You’ll recognize it easily as bright red Mars sits just about smack in the middle of it right now. The meteors appear to come from that direction.
Best times are usually after midnight, since at that your position on the earth is now looking forward into the trail, rather than backward - the meteors are coming straight at you. Well, not really.
That reminded me of the Gemini space program in the 1960s, the second of the three main programs that began with Mercury and ended with Apollo and the landing of humans on the moon. Gemini was the program that among other things tested and practiced rendezvous of two spacecraft, so that each mission required not just one but *two* near simultaneous launches. The tricky rendezvous was necessary since later the Apollo capsule and the Lunar Lander would have to perform that same maneuver prior to “translunar insertion” (remember that?).
Mother and Dad got me all the little model kits for these spacecraft. A lot of it is probably just seeing success and planning for a goal through the veil of memory but the space program seems so different, and less *possible*, now.
This page has a good locator description and very nice historical background on the meteor shower, destined someday to vanish forever. Unlike the source of most debris trails that cause meteors, trail comes not from a comet but probably an asteroid.
Unlike the Leonids and Perseids whose radiants rise very late, the constellation Gemini is well up in the east by 10pm (anyone’s time). You’ll recognize it easily as bright red Mars sits just about smack in the middle of it right now. The meteors appear to come from that direction.
Best times are usually after midnight, since at that your position on the earth is now looking forward into the trail, rather than backward - the meteors are coming straight at you. Well, not really.
That reminded me of the Gemini space program in the 1960s, the second of the three main programs that began with Mercury and ended with Apollo and the landing of humans on the moon. Gemini was the program that among other things tested and practiced rendezvous of two spacecraft, so that each mission required not just one but *two* near simultaneous launches. The tricky rendezvous was necessary since later the Apollo capsule and the Lunar Lander would have to perform that same maneuver prior to “translunar insertion” (remember that?).
Mother and Dad got me all the little model kits for these spacecraft. A lot of it is probably just seeing success and planning for a goal through the veil of memory but the space program seems so different, and less *possible*, now.
