Google Doodle follows Geminid meteor shower to Earth

Google Doodle on Thursday took us on a journey to display how the Geminid meteor shower traveled to Earth.

The slideshow Doodle reveals how 3200 Phaethon, an asteroid that may be an extinct comet, fractures when its orbit delivers it close to our sunshine and generates a path of particles. The asteroid is named soon after the son of Greek god Apollo.

This is the Geminid meteor shower, so named since the meteors show up to appear from a radiant in the constellation Gemini. The 1st recorded observation was from a riverboat on the Mississippi River in 1833, and it really is received much more extreme every single yr considering that.

Each and every December, Earth passes by means of this particles cloud, which crashes into our environment at 79,000 miles (127,000 kilometers) for each hour, the place it typically disintegrates and generates a magnificent gentle display.

This yr, it’s going to peak at about 100 for each hour about two a.m. PT, in accordance to NASA’s Bill Cooke.