Tonight is the best night of the year to catch a meteor shower according to Nguyen Duc Phuong, from the Vietnam Space Observatory Association.
Nguyen said that tonight’s shower, Geminids, is known as the ‘king’ of meteor showers and will reach its peak on the night of December 13, the early morning of December 14, with about 120 streaks per hour - "The best time to observe meteors is from 1am to 4 am on December 14," he said.
“The observers can direct the eyes toward the constellation Gemini - the focal point of the meteor shower, when this constellation is quite high in comparison to the southeast horizon. "This time the bright moonlight may affect the observations, but the Geminids is the large meteor shower with lots of bright meteors so we can still enjoy the interesting, colorful party of meteors,” Phuong added.
Most of the meteor shower originated from comets, but for the Geminids, it is related to a celestial body called 3200 Phaethon, which was discovered in 1982.”
We should probably leave the city and its light pollution for a better view but hopefully we’ll get lucky and catch of few of these cosmic streaks!
[Vietnam Net // Photo via David Kingham]
