By 苏剑林 | December 28, 2015
I remember when Scientific Space first started, there was not much original content. For a while, I was translating APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) images, but later I gradually focused on original content and stopped translating. Today, I am sharing an image again: the Geminid meteor shower over Xinglong Mountain, taken by domestic enthusiast Steed Yu and featured on APOD.
Geminids over Xinglong Mountain (Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151223.html)
Image Description: Where do Geminid meteors come from? In this wonderful composite image, you can find that the Geminids, formed by these sand-sized pieces of rock, have meteor trails with a radiant point located in the constellation of Gemini. The orbits of these meteors in the solar system point towards their parent body—Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. However, this conclusion is still somewhat debatable because this unusual object is usually in a dormant state. Perhaps Asteroid 3200 Phaethon experienced dust-releasing events more intense than we know, but even so, what exactly happened and why such violent eruptions occurred remains an unsolved mystery. Last week, when the meteor shower reached its peak, more than 50 meteors, including bright fireballs, streaked across the sky above China's Xinglong Observatory. Since the December Geminid meteor shower is one of the most accurately predicted and active meteor showers, research into its origins is likely to continue.
Scientific Space is supported by the "Cosmos Station" project of the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC). The Xinglong Observatory is the primary observation station of the NAOC. I have visited the observatory on Xinglong Mountain twice, so I have a special affection for Xinglong (of course, the Cosmos Station server is not on Xinglong Mountain~~). As for meteor showers, during my high school years, I also used to get up in the middle of the night to watch the Leonids, or keep a vigil in mid-August to watch the Perseids, and so on. Those were very beautiful memories. I also vividly remember the time we observed under the cold wind in Ningxia during the Astronomy Olympiad. Now, whenever the night sky is clear, I still look up at the stars, look at the heavens, and see if there are any sudden meteors.