Geminids in defence of the night sky

Composition of the Geminid meteor shower on the night of 13/12/2022 for almost 3 hours over the TTT telescopes. Credit: Juan Carlos Casado (starryearth). More information and high-resolution image: https://flic.kr/p/2o67iSM

After four years of activities, the Interreg EELabs project is coming to an end and, as a final touch, on the night of 14 December, from 22:30 UT (local time in the Canary Islands), the Geminids meteor shower will be broadcast on the sky-live.tv channel from the Teide Observatory (Tenerife) and El Anillo (Extremadura).

The so-called “shooting stars” are actually small dust particles of different sizes (from fractions of millimetres to centimetres in diameter) that comets – or asteroids – leave behind during their orbits around the Sun. The cloud of particles that is released from the asteroid (3200) Phaethon on each of its visits (it completes one lap of the Sun every 1.4 years) is responsible for the Geminids shower that we enjoy every year, at this time of year.

For more than a decade, this meteor shower has been characterised as the most intense of the year, exceeding 100 meteors per hour (ZHR, zenithal hourly rates). This year, moreover, the absence of the Moon will allow us to enjoy it even better, as even the faintest meteors will be visible. The best nights to go out to look for shooting stars are 12-13 and 13-14 December. Although if the weather conditions are not favourable or light pollution prevents it, it will be possible to follow them live on the sky-live.tv channel, which will conclude the dissemination activities of the Interreg EELabs project from the Teide Observatory (Tenerife) and from El Anillo (Extremadura), with the collaboration of the Extremadura Buenas Noches project.

Link to the webcast: https://youtu.be/waBEQfV5F6o

For a sustainable use of artificial light

Since the end of 2019, the Interreg EELabs project has made 24 broadcasts of celestial events – in addition to the #UniversoEnCasa series and the monitoring of the eruption of La Palma – to raise public awareness of the need to preserve the darkness of the night for the protection of nocturnal ecosystems and the development of astronomy.

Over the last four years, several photometer networks have been installed to monitor the natural darkness of the Macaronesian archipelagos, for which autonomous photometers and MiNiOs were developed, the results of which are available for use by the scientific and educational community on the IoT-EELab portal and which have given rise to a method for calibrating satellite images from the measurements of these networks of nocturnal devices. In this time, some municipalities in Tenerife and Gran Canaria have committed to extend their regulations to protect the night through collaboration agreements, which will continue to defend night ecosystems and the starry sky from artificial night-time light.

The Geminids 2023 broadcast will mark the end of the Interreg EELabs project, but new initiatives, such as the LIFE Natura@night project, are already underway to protect the darkness of night and the life within it.

Recommendations for observing the Geminids 2023

The Geminids is a shower that can be observed from both the northern and southern hemispheres. Although it will be from the northern hemisphere where the greatest activity will be seen, as the constellation Gemini – the point from which the shooting stars appear to be born and which gives the shower its name – will be higher above the horizon. In addition, the meteors of the Geminids are slower than those of other meteor showers, so it will be easier to spot some of these “shooting stars”.

To ensure that you see as many meteors as possible, you should be in a dark place -free of light pollution from cities- and with clear horizons. We should wait at least until midnight and fix our gaze on an area of the sky, where we will keep it for a few minutes to “detect” a Geminid. It is recommended to lie down on the ground and wear warm clothes. And the most important thing: be patient.

EELabs (eelabs.eu) is a project funded by the INTERREG V-A MAC Programme 2014-2020, co-financed by the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) of the European Union, under contract number MAC2/4.6d/238. EELabs involves 5 Macaronesian centres (IAC, ITER, ULPGC, SPEA-Azores and SPEA-Madeira). The objective of EELabs is to create Laboratories to measure the Energy Efficiency of Artificial Night Light in protected natural areas of Macaronesia (Canary Islands, Madeira and Azores).

Three Spanish supercomputing centres: the Centro Extremeño de Tecnologías Avanzadas (CETA-CIEMAT), the Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya (CSUC) and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) will collaborate in the distribution of the web portal broadcast (sky-live.tv).

The LIFE Natura@night project is co-financed by the LIFE programme of the European Union, coordinated by the SPEA, and has as partners the Câmara de Lobos, the Câmara Municipal do Funchal, the Câmara Municipal de Santa Cruz, the Câmara Municipal de Machico, the Câmara Municipal de Santana, the Câmara Municipal de Santa Cruz da Graciosa, Direção Regional dos Assuntos do Mar, Instituto das Florestas e Conservação da Natureza, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Instituto Tecnológico de Canarias, Fluxo de Luz and the Spanish Ornithological Society.

Audiovisual material

High resolution images and videos of Geminids: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmKwTM67
Geminids with wavy trajectory: https://flic.kr/p/2n9JWwg
High resolution images of meteor showers: https://flic.kr/s/aHsjH2BFa4
Travel on a Comet – meteoroid formation: https://youtu.be/iCoqxLjMmmU
Geminids orbit simulation: https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Geminids