The annual Geminid meteor shower peaks each year from the 13th to the 15th of December — that will be Wednesday–Thursday and Thursday–Friday nights of this week. Be sure to take your young astronomers out for a look!
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. If you have good weather, this should make for an excellent viewing opportunity. And this year the moon will be new, so the skies will be especially dark.
Meteor showers like the Geminids occur when the earth in its orbit around the sun crosses 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 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)
- ➢ Meteor Showers – 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.)
Pay a visit to a dark-sky location near your homeschool on the night of the 13th or 14th this month, look toward Gemini, and see what shooting stars you can see.
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 help 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. ✨
❡ 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. 🌟
❡ 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 science students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and narrate a summary back to you. 🌌
❡ Make friendship with the stars: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get 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! 🗓
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❡ 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. 🏡