How to spot Santa in the sky
good as Father Christmas is watching!
Here are the times it can be seen before Christmas:
Today, 5.48pm, can be seen for around 2 minutes
Friday, December 15, 4.56pm, can be seen for around 3 minutes
Saturday, December 16, 5.40pm, can be seen for around 1 minute
Sunday, December 17, 4.48pm, can be seen for around 1 minute
The NORAD tracker - www.noradsanta.org plus mobile apps - is also a good website to use.
Right now there’s a countdown, then on Christmas Eve the service offers a live ‘Santa Cam’ and tallies the number of gifts delivered to children as Christmas Eve progresses into Christmas Day around the world. HUDDERSFIELD stargazers willing to forgo sleep and brave the cold could catch an hour-long stunning meteor shower.
The Geminid meteor shower takes place every December as the Earth passes through a debris trail from 3200 Phaethon.
This year the best time to see the Geminids will be between 1am and 2am tonight.
And an almost absent moon will ensure that the meteors, widely regarded as the most impressive of the year, stand out brightly as they streak across the sky.
The meteors or ‘shooting stars’ are the result of small particles, in some cases as small as a grain of sand, entering the Earth’s upper atmosphere at some 130,000mph and lighting up the night as fastmoving streaks of light.
It is called the Geminid shower because the meteors appear to come from the part of the sky associated with the constellation Gemini, although really it is the asteroid 3200 Phaethon that causes them.
It takes place from December 4 to 17 with its peak activity being around December 14 when up to 100 meteors or ‘shooting stars’ can be seen every hour. The shower can be seen across the world but the further north you go the more chance you have of seeing it.
Just wrap up warm and head outside and find a spot of night sky away from the bright town lights and look up. Give yourself at least an hour of observing time as the meteors can come in spurts and are interspersed with lulls. ■■If you see the Geminid meteor shower send your videos to us at editorial@examiner.co.uk or on Twitter @Examiner