Friday the 13th night looks fully cloudy and rainy. There has been no word from our contact from at Pickering Creek about cancellation. It would be a poor night for Geminids.

The Geminid meteor shower is usually the best meteor shower of the year and except for the inconvenience of a nearly full Moon (96%) we should not expect 120 meteors per hour at its peak which occurs on December 13.

The Geminids are associated with the radiant found in the constellation Gemini generated by the asteroid 3200 Phaethon.  Unlike many showers this starts in the evening and  peaks in the early morning so we may see a few other objects while the evening is young.

An observing session is planned for December 13, 2019 between 8 pm to 10 pm at the Pickering Creek Audubon Center in Easton MD for a moony night public program.

Our host will be Harrison Jackson, the Education & Outreach Associate, with the Pickering Creek Audubon Center.

This will be a public viewing event where people have been invited to bring telescopes so there may be some collimation issues with the Newtonian telescopes. We will have a few well collimated telescopes of our own.

The Moon will be 96% full at 9PM so there will be few stars available. We should be able to see the Great Orion Nebula, M45, M42 at least. A tiny Mars with  a diameter of 8.4′ and an elusive Neptune will be up in Aquarius. The Auriga open clusters M38, M36, and M37 may also be located.

Directions are found on the Pickering Creek Website.