{"id":62609,"date":"2012-12-13T20:38:27","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T01:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=62609"},"modified":"2012-12-13T20:38:27","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T01:38:27","slug":"mysterious-geminid-meteor-shower-peaking-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/astronomy\/mysterious-geminid-meteor-shower-peaking-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Mysterious Geminid meteor shower peaking now!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fEPPGF3KrMQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight (Thursday) and Friday night, with rates of up to 100 per hour just before dawn. Most meteor showers are caused by icy comets, which spew jets of meteoroids when they are heated by sunlight. The Geminids are different. The parent is not a comet but a weird rocky object named 3200 Phaethon &#8212; which may or may not be a chunk broken off of the asteroid Pallas, with debris from the collision providing the meteors.   <\/p>\n<p>Or 3200 Phaethon may a &#8220;rock comet&#8221; &#8212; a new kind of object being discussed by some astronomers. It&#8217;s basically an asteroid that comes close enough to the Sun for debris to be scorched off its surface, contributing to a comet-like tail. But that theory has its holes, too. There&#8217;s more info in the video above and <a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/science-news\/science-at-nasa\/2012\/09dec_rockcomet\/\">here<\/a>. Whatever is causing it, it&#8217;s a show worth catching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight (Thursday) and Friday night, with rates of up to 100 per hour just before dawn. Most meteor showers are caused by icy comets, which spew jets of meteoroids when they are heated by sunlight. The Geminids are different. The parent is not a comet but a weird rocky object &#8230; <a title=\"Mysterious Geminid meteor shower peaking now!\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/astronomy\/mysterious-geminid-meteor-shower-peaking-now\/\" aria-label=\"More on Mysterious Geminid meteor shower peaking now!\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":191,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/191"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}