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Brilliant Geminid Meteor Shower Dazzles Brunei Sky

Bandar Seri Begawan – In the predawn hours of December 13, 2015, as the Earth began to sweep through a dense remains of debris from asteroid 3200 Phaethon, these falling space debris burned up in the atmosphere and caused bright flashes in the sky known as shooting stars or geminids meteor showers.

The Geminid shower got its name from the constellation of Gemini or the Twins. From Tutong, there were about 10 meteors in an hour visibled on that morning. The rate is expected to increase as the annual geminid meteor shower peaks tonight (13-14 December 2015). That is when more than 50 shooting stars might be visible every hour (depending on your location/sky). Geminids can be spotted starting between 10 pm and before sunrise, and expected to peak at around 2 am. Continue reading “Brilliant Geminid Meteor Shower Dazzles Brunei Sky”

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2010 Dec 14 Geminids Meteor Shower Observation

2010 Dec 14 Geminids Meteor Shower Observation

Bandar Seri Begawan – Today, in the early hours a few members of the Astronomical Society of Brunei Darussalam (PABD) were at the Bukit Agok, Tutong, to catch the annual meteor shower.
The meteor show peaks on 13/14 of December and astronomers said it would be the best meteor shower this year.

Coincidently it was a moonless night so it will provide us a greater chance to view the shooting stars. But clouds were coming and going and mostly patching the sky. Despite of the cloudy morning, we were lucky as the view of the sky began to get clear around 1.45 am.

As soon as the sky cleared up, the excitement began as meteor streaked and some had left trails across the sky. It was the Geminids meteor shower and they were few bright slow meteors seen but mostly they were faint and fast. It was a brilliant display with rate count went up to 30 meteors in an hour.

Some of us tried to take photos of the meteor show, unluckily none of us managed to capture even though the view was perfectly in frame. I account this failure was due to the light pollution and certainly the camera set should be upgraded to use a very fast lens ( f/2.8 – 2).

About 3 am, the thunderstorm started to come in forcing us to end our observation.