Dance of the Gas Giants, Meteor Showers to Grace Australia’s Night Skies
Australian stargazers are in store for a week of extraordinary celestial events as the annual Geminid meteor shower starts Sunday night followed by the rare alignment of two giant gas planets.
The Geminid meteor shower is expected to be visible for a few hours from about 1-2 a.m. AET Monday morning, and is estimated to peak around 3 a.m.
On Dec. 21, the southern hemisphere’s summer solstice, the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn which happens every 20 years will been visible in the night sky. But this year, the two gas giants will appear the closest they have been since 1623 only 0.1 degree apart.