Oman Set to Witness Geminids Meteor Shower this week

Muscat: The skies of the Sultanate of Oman will witness on this Thursday the phenomenon of the Geminid meteor shower, which was named after its origin from the constellation Gemini (Gemini), and will reach its peak on Wednesday night and dawn Thursday, December 13 and 14.

Ibrahim bin Mohammed Al Mahrouqi, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Oman Astronomical Society, said December will witness a number of astronomical events, including the fall of meteor showers known astronomically as Geminis or Geminis. 

He added that these meteors are one of the best throughout the year, as these meters will fall on a night devoid of moonlight at almost all hours of the night.

He stated that astronomical calculations indicate that this meteor shower will reach its peak on Wednesday evening and continue until Thursday dawn, as meteors can be seen in the skies of the Sultanate and the world in an eye-catching scene.

It is expected that its fall rates will reach 120 meteors per hour, as in 2020, members of the Omani Astronomical Society monitored 1,063 meteors, the result of 6 hours of monitoring the Geminid meteor shower in an eye-catching scene. Its peak was between 1:00 and 1:59, reaching 227 meteors during One hour.

He explained that the Geminid meteor shower results from the debris of the asteroid known as “Phaethon,” which was discovered in 1982, unlike the rest of the meteors that come from comets.

Al-Mahrouqi pointed out that the debris of this asteroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere every year from December 7 to 17, and this causes the phenomenon of meteors that are characterized by their many colors, indicating that when the Earth’s orbit directly intersects with those remains, the latter burns at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 35 degrees Celsius. Kilometers per second at an altitude of approximately 70 to 100 kilometers in the form of bright meteors, which are relatively slow compared to other meteors, resulting in the formation of wonderful long arcs that appear in yellow, green, or blue, and last for a second or two in the sky.