We used the FM radio system described on our main page. The 2002 Geminid meteor shower showed significant activity over many days. The observed peak rate occurred between Midnight EST December 13, 2002, and 1:00 AM EST on December 14, 2002. This was earlier than the prediction of 4:00 AM EST on December 14, 2002. The activity rates were determined by the same computer program that was used for the previous studies. It counts as meteor signals all peaks with an initial rise greater than 20% of the background in one second. This criterion prevents noise signals from being counted as meteors, but it probably leads to an under-count. See the main page for more details.

Rates for 2002 Geminds

The following graphs show the meteor count rates per hour we measured for the 2002 Geminids.

Gallery of Events

The Geminid Meteor Shower always has some high amplitude events. Here's a small gallery of the best of the Geminids 2002. The "fuzzy top" events usually arise from the radio waves interfering with each other after reflecting from an extended ionized region of the atmosphere, but some can be fused peaks in which one meteor follows another in a short period. The time above each chart is for the center of the chart. The data points are at one second intervals, and there are 10 seconds per chart division, or one minute across the full chart.

Summary

The peak rate we observed for the 2002 Geminid meteor shower was 42 meteors per hour. The peak occurred between Midnight EST December 13, 2002, and 1:00 AM EST on December 14, 2002.

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Comments and technical questions can be addressed to Devlin Gualtieri, at Honeywell Laboratory, Morristown, NJ.