🌠 HOMESCHOOL ASTRONOMY: Geminid Meteors for December

The annual Geminid meteor shower usually peaks each year from the 13th to the 15th of December, so the next few days will be the time to be on the lookout — make the Geminids an annual homeschool tradition. You can get some quick facts and observing recommendations by entering your location at timeanddate.com:

• ➢ Geminid Meteor Shower (timeanddate.com)

Truth be told, this year’s Geminid show will probably not be very good because the moon will be full or nearly so on the peak nights, and its bright light will wash out many of the fainter meteors. But that’s a lesson in itself for your students: earth-bound astronomy is best under dark-sky conditions, and that means it’s best around the time of the new moon each month. The fainter stars and the fainter meteors are all still there at the time of a full moon, of course, but they’re much harder to see when they have to compete with the moon’s brightness.

The Geminid meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Gemini (the Twins). At this time of year in the northern hemisphere, Gemini rises clear in the northeast by eight o’clock in the evening and climbs up overhead through the night.

Meteor showers like the Geminids occur when the earth, in its orbit around the sun, passes through the trail of debris left behind another object making its orbit around the sun (that’s why they occur at the same time each year). For most meteor showers, the parent object is a comet, but in the case of the Geminids, it’s an unusual asteroid called 3200 Phaethon, which orbits the sun once every 1.4 years. You and your students can learn all about meteors and meteor showers in general on the website of the American Meteor Society — here are some of their resources:

• ➢ Meteor Showers — Introduction (amsmeteors.org)
• ➢ Meteors — Frequently Asked Questions (amsmeteors.org)
• ➢ Meteor Shower Calendar (amsmeteors.org)

The AMS also has a printable color poster of basic meteor terminology — it’s just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board.

There is a remarkable interactive animation of the Geminid meteor shower and its parent asteroid available from the website meteorshowers.org. Until quite recently, interactive animations of this kind would have been available only on the most advanced computers, but now you can examine them in detail from the comfort of your little home academy.

Note that this animation is fully interactive: by dragging and scrolling across the screen you can tilt the plane of the solar system to view it from above or below, and you can zoom in on the earth’s or the asteroid’s orbit. (The animation begins in the outer reaches of the solar system, so you’ll have to start by zooming in to find our blue planet earth orbiting third from the sun.)

The moon may wash out many of the dimmer Geminids this year, but any homeschool time spent outside enjoying the night sky will still be time well spent. And you never know, a few of the brighter meteors may just flash across your field of view.

What celestial sights and astronomical apparitions have you and your students been examining in your homeschool this Orion Term? 🔭

❡ Meteors through the year: We take special note of three meteor showers each year in the River Houses: the Leonids in November, the Geminids in December, and the Perseids in August. But there are many other smaller meteor showers that occur regularly all through the year, and they’re well worth looking for, especially if you live in a dark-sky location. The annual meteor calendars available from the American Meteor Society and timeanddate.com will show you when and where to look for them. 🌠

❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students the major constellations and the names of the principal stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨

❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school astronomy students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and then narrate a summary back to you. 🌌

❡ Star bright: If you’d like some light and easy homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us month by month as we make twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Subscribe to our free River Houses newsletter to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡