{"id":12106,"date":"2023-06-16T10:04:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T04:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=12106"},"modified":"2025-03-30T07:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T01:52:18","slug":"geminid-meteor-shower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/geminid-meteor-shower\/","title":{"rendered":"Geminid Meteor Shower"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About the Geminid Meteor Shower:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>What it is?<\/strong> It peaks during <strong>mid-December<\/strong> each year and is considered to be one of the best and most <strong>reliable annual meteor showers.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Unlike most meteor showers that <strong>originate from comets<\/strong>, the Geminid stream appears to originate from an <strong>asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon,<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>New findings<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The new findings have perplexed scientists as <strong>asteroids are not<\/strong> typically <strong>influenced by the Sun&#8217;s heat<\/strong> and should not leave behind a trail.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Phaethon<\/strong> is an asteroid, but as it flies by the Sun, it seems to have some kind of <strong>temperature-driven activity.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The Parker data indicates that a powerful event such as a high-speed <strong>collision or a gaseous explosion<\/strong> likely caused the creation of the Geminid stream.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Key facts about the 3200 Phaethon<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>It is <strong>classified as an asteroid<\/strong> &#8211; the first to be discovered via satellite.<\/li>\n<li>It was discovered on Oct. 11, 1983, using the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, and named after the <strong>Greek myth of Phaethon<\/strong>, son of the sun god Helios, due to its close approach to Sun.<\/li>\n<li>It is <strong>blue in colour,<\/strong> which is rare for an asteroid.<\/li>\n<li>It orbits the sun every 524 days (1.43 years), coming as close as 0.14 astronomical units (AU) and reaching as far as 2.40 AU from the sun.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Its <strong>orbit is highly elliptical.<\/strong> It completes a rotation on its axis every 3.60 hours.<\/li>\n<li>It is about 3 kilometres in diameter, making it larger than 99% of asteroids.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is an asteroid?<\/h3>\n<p>An asteroid is a relatively small chunk of rocky minerals that orbits the Sun, often described as a minor planet. When the orbiting object is larger, it&#8217;s called a planetoid.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiatoday.in\/science\/story\/parker-solar-probe-reveals-mysterious-origin-of-geminid-meteor-shower-on-earth-2393456-2023-06-15\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Parker Solar Probe reveals the mysterious origin of Geminid meteor shower on Earth<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geminid meteor shower peaks during mid-December each year and is considered to be one of the best and most reliable annual meteor showers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":12107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}