Geminid meteor shower at its peak tonight

Meteors are typically debris from comets, but in this case, the Geminids are debris from asteroid 3200 Phaeton; only the January Quadrantids are also from an asteroid.

The Winter Circle stars are bright in the east by 10 p.m. Jupiter now rises at midnight, planets still look great in the pre-dawn sky, Mars approaches Spica.

Anniversaries of note:

• 112 years ago this Thursday, the Wright Brothers made their historical powered flight at Kitty Hawk.
• If we look at the development of commercial space access today, we can see a similar pattern developing – some providers are interested in and actually developing the capability to fly ordinary people into space, but that hasn’t come about just yet. Right now, it’s just supplies – like the mail service that grew out of the Wright Brothers’ accomplishments.
• 43 years ago today, Gene Cernan became the last human to walk on the moon. Cernan was accompanied by Harrirson Schmidt and Ron Evans. Schmidt was the only scientist -geologist – to visit the moon.