The Geminid meteor shower peaked on December 13th and for the first time in years I got a chance to see it. Wednesday night the 12th of December started clear but rapidly clouded over. Not forecast and unexpected. Jeff and I laid out back at my place and saw a bunch of meteors despite the clouds, including several fireballs.
The next night, the 13th of December I traveled out to and watched from the Flint Hills. For December you couldn’t ask for better weather, about 40F all night with light south winds. It started out crystal clear but thin clouds did move over the area around midnight. The show was still fantastic. Its the best meteor shower I’ve seen in many years,
Photo below is a composition of the night including the approaching clouds. This is made from many exposures taken through out the night. The constellation Gemini is lightly outlined and over two dozen Geminid meteors are visible (click for bigger version).
I didn’t start counting meteors until 9:00pm but prior to that Phil and Thomas were seeing many meteors. The count I recorded is below:
| Time | Geminid Meteors | Sporadic Meteors | |
| 21:00 – 21:30 | 20 | 3 | |
| 21:50 – 22:20 | 23 | 5 | |
| 22:50 – 23:20 | 26 | 0 | |
| 23:35 – 00:05 | 31 | 1 | |
| 00:30 – 01:00 | 33 | 2 | |
| 01:32 – 02:02 | 37 | 1 | |
| 02:31 – 03:02 | 31 | 2 |
Thats 201 Geminids in 3 1/2 hours effective observing time. Going to be hard to top this shower for awhile.