The biggest meteor shower of 2023 can be seen across Brazil on Wednesday evening (13), including in Santa Catarina. About 100 meteors will pass across the country’s skies per hour, but how many you see depends on meteorological conditions and lighting conditions.

The biggest meteor shower of 2023 can be seen from Santa Catarina and throughout Brazil – Photo: Freepik/stockgiu/Reproduction

A meteor shower, called the Geminids because it is in the direction of the Gemini constellation, will also be seen on Thursday evening (14). It started last Saturday but reaches its peak on Wednesday between midnight and 2 am and hence can be seen in the state.

Meteors must enter Earth’s atmosphere at 260 km/h and can be seen with the naked eye unless you are in an area polluted by a lot of lights. Some of the best places to watch rain are on the terraces of buildings or in fields away from major cities.

Typically recorded once a year, in mid-December, the Geminids occur as Earth approaches the orbit of asteroid 3200 Phaeton, which was previously close and has several rocks and debris.

Meteor 3200 Phaeton, already known in astronomy, is “responsible” for this phenomenon. Photo: Hubble Space Telescope/ESA/Reproduction

To detect a meteor shower, you don’t need any special equipment such as telescopes. Weather conditions will allow or not to see this phenomenon. The clearer the sky, the easier it will be to observe meteors.

According to Marcelo Zurita, technical director of BRAMON (Brazilian Meteor Observation Network), the secret is to not have light sources nearby. “If you’re downtown, you’ll end up seeing maybe four or five meteors per hour,” he notes.

“If you go inland to a place away from major centers and turn off all the lights around you, including your cell phone, you could see up to 100 meteors per hour,” Marcelo estimates. It is recommended to go to as dark a place as possible.

As a rule, comets are the cause of meteor showers. Photo: Gianluca Masi via AP

Meteor showers could help prevent future asteroid impacts

This rain itself does not pose any danger to the Earth, but it can serve as an indicator that a large object is located near the planet’s orbit. “This particular object was not created by a comet, but by an asteroid, in this case Phaeton 3200,” he explains.

“This does not pose any risk to us for the coming centuries, but we have an idea [de onde está]. In this case, fortunately, it is a known object,” he adds. In short, if the phenomenon comes from an unknown celestial body, it’s time to sound the alarm.

Meteor showers are typically produced by comets that, during previous passages through the inner Solar System, left behind trails of debris as they were heated by the Sun.

The next meteor shower poses no threat to Earth, but the event could serve to prevent future impacts – Photo: kjpargeter/Freepik/Reproduction

In this process, gases evaporate, and jets of steam also carry with them some of the dust that makes up ice stones, like comets that fly from the ends of space. These fragments form a trail of so-called meteoroids measuring less than one meter.

Understand the difference between meteor and meteorite

Even though it originated from a comet or, in the latter case, an asteroid, the name “meteor shower” has a simple explanation. “A meteor is a light phenomenon resulting from the passage of a meteoroid through the atmosphere at high speed,” explains Marcelo.

“A meteoroid that was in orbit around the sun and crashed into our atmosphere ultimately created this glowing phenomenon that we know as a meteor,” he adds.

A meteor and a meteorite have a fundamental difference: the second must hit the planet in order to receive this name – Photo: stockgiu/Freepik/Reproduction

It is worth remembering that this element should not be confused with meteorites. In this case, they are called that because they “hit” the Earth. “[Só] if it is large enough not to evaporate completely in the atmosphere and not reach the ground,” notes Marcelo.

In other words, all collisions of space objects with the planet were caused by meteorites. This will not happen in the next meteor shower – for the good of the Earth.