December 15, 2012
The same gravity that holds galaxies together and keeps planets in their orbits also held you to the Earth on the day you were born.
When Gemini Sends Stars to Paranal
Birthday · December 15, 2012
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APOD published December 15, 2012. Credit: Stéphane Guisard. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
From a radiant point in the constellation of the Twins, the annual Geminid meteor shower rained down on planet Earth this week. Recorded near the shower's peak in the early hours of December 14, this skyscape captures Gemini's lovely shooting stars in a careful composite of 30 exposures, each 20 seconds long, from the dark of the Chilean Atacama Desert over ESO's Paranal Observatory. In the foreground Paranal's four Very Large Telescopes, four Auxillary Telescopes, and the VLT Survey telescope are all open and observing. The skies above are shared with bright Jupiter (left), Orion, (top left), and the faint light of the Milky Way. Dust swept up from the orbit of active asteroid 3200 Phaethon, Gemini's meteors enter the atmosphere traveling at about 22 kilometers per second.
Image credit: Stéphane Guisard