Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2024 December 15
Image Credit & Copyright: Jakub Kuřák
Explanation: Meteors have been flowing out from the constellation Gemini. This was expected, as mid-December is the time of the Geminid Meteor Shower. Pictured here, over two dozen meteors were caught in successively added exposures taken over several hours early Saturday morning from a snowy forest in Poland. The fleeting streaks were bright enough to be seen over the din of the nearly full Moon on the upper right. These streaks can all be traced back to a point on the sky called the radiant toward the bright stars Pollux and Castor in the image center. The Geminid meteors started as sand sized bits expelled from asteroid 3200 Phaethon during its elliptical orbit through the inner Solar System.
Tomorrow's picture: comet cliff
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
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