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http://earthsky.org/astronomy-es ... minid-meteor-shower
By Deborah Byrd in ASTRONOMY ESSENTIALS | SPACE | December 10, 2017
This mysterious rock-comet is the parent body of this week’s Geminid meteor shower. It’ll brush closely past Earth on December 16, just a few nights after the Geminids’ peak. Will 2017 be a fantastic year for the Geminids?
3200 Phaethon will sweep close to Earth – just 0.069 astronomical units (6.4 million miles, 10.3 million km, 26 lunar-distances) on December 16, 2017 at 23 UTC; translate to your time zone. Image via Osamu Ajiki (AstroArts)/ Ron Baalke (JPL) / Ade Ashford (AN)/ AstronomyNow. It will not be visible to the eye.
On the peak mornings of the 2017 Geminid meteor shower – December 13 and 14 – the moon will be in a waning crescent phase, visible only shortly before dawn, and near two planets before dawn. Even more importantly, a curious body known as 3200 Phaethon – sometimes called a rock-comet, thought to be the source of the Geminid meteor shower – will be gliding through space relatively near to Earth. It’ll come closest to Earth in its 523.5-day orbit only a few days after the Geminids’ peak, on December 16.
What will happen? No one knows for sure how many meteors you might see, or if 2017’s shower will be extra special because 3200 Phaethon is nearby. But it’s a fact that, when a parent comet is nearby, a meteor shower can be spectacular.
So plan to watch this shower in 2017!
