It's Geminid time!

The Geminid meteor shower should peak on the 13th/14th December, perhaps with rates as high as 100 shooting stars per hour. These is an unusual storm, because it doesn't seem to be associated with a comet. Instead, the source of the tiny rocks that make up the shower seems to be an asteroid called (strangely) 3200 Phaethon. This asteroid zooms very close to the sun during its orbit, so perhaps it gets cooked enough to create a swarm of debris along its orbital path. Another possibility is that 3200 Phaethon was actually smashed off of the much larger asteroid Pallas, and the Geminids are tiny fragments left over from this impact.

Either way, the absence of any Moon on these nights makes it very likely that this year is the best chance you'll get to see this storm. Look towards the north-east in the late evening - dress warmly!

Saturday morning meeting

So yesterday I told the amazing story the descent of the Apollo 11 mission's lander "Eagle". Hopefully, you came to realise that it was not at all as easy, or safe as popular histories might let you believe. I think that Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were every bit as heroic in the face of terrifying situations as other explorers, such as Shackleton or Douglas Mawson (more about him another time perhaps).

Here is an edited sound file of the descent as it was broadcast on 20th July 1969. I have deleted some of the gaps and tidied up a few parts, so my version is considerably shorter than it would have been in reality.

Listen out for Charlie Duke's voice (he's "Houston", or CAPCOM), Buzz Aldrin reading out altitude and lateral data and Neil Armstrong announcing the landing. You'll also hear Charlie Duke say "copy 1202" just before they get to 1400 feet - that was the error code in the navigation computer. Later, you'll hear descriptions of "great shadow" (the Eagle's own shadow on the Lunar surface) and the spray of dust and debris as the rocket exhaust hit the ground. Just before the landing, listen out for "contact light" as the leg probe hits the Moon, and then the engine shut-down sequence. Finally of course, there is the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck exchange between Armstrong and Duke - "Tranquillity Base here, the Eagle has landed", and "you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thankyou!"