The night sky offered the sky gazers with a celestial treat on Saturday as a spectacular meteor shower lit up the dark sky with approximately 100 shooting stars per hour after reaching its fiery peak.
Braving the bone-chilling temperatures, the adventure lovers turned up in large numbers to enjoy the Geminid meteor shower.
The astronomers had announced that the weather conditions were close to perfect for the annual spectacle of the meteor shower.
The shooting stars were seen streaking in the whole sky after midnight across London and past the Dover Patrol Memorial in St Margarets Bay, Kent.
Reports said that the incredible meteor shower was detected from Skopje, Macedonia to Washington as the amazing view was visible in both hemispheres in the clear skies.
The Geminids produce from 50 to 100 shooting stars every hour at their height. With rapid bursts of two or three at occasional intervals, they glow in multiple colours.
The best time to see the meteor showers was around 2 am. According to the scientists, at that point the meteors appear to originate in the sky.
Travelling at the pace of over 22 miles per second, the meteors were visible the whole night from around 10 pm onward as they burned up about 24 miles above the Earth.
Geminids are debris from 3200 Phaethon, a three-mile-wide comet which is extinct now. NASA says 3200 Phaethon was previously believed to be an asteroid.
Share this:
