Of the dozen or so annual meteor showers, the Geminids is one of the most spectacular. It will take place in the wee hours of December 14. NASA: Meteor schedule

"The Geminids is really a hot meteor shower," Pitts said. The meteors fall at medium speed, so they're easy to locate, he added.

The Geminids can be seen from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, though you'll want to get away from city lights if possible. In truly dark skies, you may be able to see 60 to 120 meteors per hour.

Meteor showers come from comets, concoctions of carbon dioxide, rocks and dirt. A comet eventually warms up in its orbit around the sun and then discards its "dust bunnies," as Pitts called them. Earth cuts through that path and, as the comet dust falls into the heavier atmosphere nearer Earth, the meteors begin to glow.

Check out more info at:

Comet Shower on December 14th

When I think about that, I picture a humongous hurricane. Watching the radar formations of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, especially the last 2, there was a gigantic funnel cloud that formed the eye. You can call that a 'dust bunny' of monstrous proportions. Now, if we on this earth are going to pass through a comet's 'dust bunny,' yikes! Whoa! Mid-December it says. Well, seeing that for the past 2 years there has not been a catastrophic hurricane hit the coast of the US, but there has been sizable fires in the California causing those 'fire bunnys,' there might be cause for a little concern. But, as everything is turning out the opposite of what has been forecast, it might be that since the Geminid shower will be seen in the Northern Hemisphere, maybe the 'dust bunny' will turn on the Northern Lights. Remember 'As above, so below.'



It gets a lot more technical than that. Imagine a nickel-iron alloy rock travelling through -260 degree space at 25,000 miles per hour. Now imagine how big this rock was, say 1 million years ago when it first came out from maybe a collision with another rock like the earth or the sun and all of the particles that were thrown off from this collision stay in the course of this big rock in a vortex; that is your 'dust bunny.' The contents of these 'dust bunnies' are mostly Heavy Hydrogen (H3). When the H3 strikes or brushes against the protective layer of the earth (Ozone = O3) it burns up and what is created by the force is many different elements. The first element is water, H2O.
That leaves an atom of Hydrogen and 2 atoms of Oxygen. With the high temperature of the collision and the natural propensity of Oxygen to burn, Carbon Dioxide is formed (CO2) from the burning. It just goes on and on . . .

The OP's article is reliable, and really does not require any update, correction, or reinterpretation.

The first reply has mixed apples and oranges, by not more accurately describing the relation, or lack therof, between various matters of terrestrial weather, space weather, meteors, asteroids and planetisimals, and comets.

Etc.

Can you elaborate?




3200 Phaethon is sometimes thought to be from the asteroid belt. Another idea is that it is a relatively burned out comet, since its grain density is between comet dust and asteroid material. So, it is not really nickle-iron.

Interplanetary space is much hotter than -268 anything. However, if you meant the temperature of the "object" near earth, it would be more correct to say 268 degrees K (and less in Earth's shadow).

At its perihelion of .1398 AU (12,995,255 mi.), it might reach >700 degrees K.

Also, how does the meteorite material contain, convert into, or generate mostly tritium?

At 5 km. diameter, that's a nice sized comet. Earth Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance is 0.0206178 AU (1,916,549 miles). The trail of particles should produce a show, this year, hopefully.

This is an interesting example of some possible confusion over the use of the terms asteroid and comet, in regards to what is generally considered the best meteor shower- the Quadrantids. It has a comet-like orbit at perihelion, with an asteroid-like aphelion (which is why it was first designated a possible asteroid by LONEOS).

It takes a minute to download the PDF article, but it's worth reading-

2003 EH 1 IS THE QUADRANTID SHOWER PARENT COMET, Peter Jenniskens, Ph.D.



Also-

A/2003 EH1 (LONEOS) is an Amor type asteroid, and was 19th magnitude when discovered by LONEOS on 2003 March 6.11.

The initial orbit on MPEC 2003-E27 [2003 March 7] was not particularly unusual, apart from a high inclination, however further observations have given a higher eccentricity. Peter Jenniskens has noted a close similarity to the orbit of the Quadrantid meteors. It is worth further study to see if it shows any cometary activity. The orbit is typical of a Jupiter family comet and it can approach within 0.3 AU AU of Jupiter and the Earth. The object is in a 5.53 year orbit, with perihelion at 1.19 AU and an eccentricity of 0.62. It was at perihelion in late February and will fade.

P. Jenniskens, NASA Ames Research Center, has pointed out that 2003 EH_1 (cf. MPEC 2003-E27) would seem to be a very strong candidate for the parent of the Quadrantid meteor stream. The later orbits, from arcs of up to 48 days (MPO 48330), indicate that frequent approaches within 0.2-0.3 AU of Jupiter occur, those during the past century or two evidently increasing q from just under 1 AU (with other orbital elements also very similar to those of the Quadrantids) to the present 1.19 AU. The current theoretical radiant for 2003 EH_1 (R.A. = 229.9 deg, Decl. = +49.6 deg; V_inf = 41.7 km/s at solar longitude 282.94 deg, equinox 2000.0) is at the center of the Quadrantid radiants measured by photographic means, the narrow dispersion implying a young (about 500 years) shower age.

From that dispersion, Jenniskens et al. (1997, Astron. Astrophys. 327, 1242) suspected that the parent was still among the meteoroids, hiding as a minor planet. On computing a parabolic orbit for C/1490 Y1, Hasegawa (1979, Publ. Astron. Soc. Japan 31, 257) introduced that comet as the likely Quadrantid parent. In attempting to link the 2003 observations to those of 1490-1491, Jenniskens, and also B. G. Marsden (Center for Astrophysics), have found that most of the potential solutions with the required Jan. 1491 perihelion date yield 0.5 < q < 0.6 AU in 1491, and this is probably too small to fit the data used by Hasegawa.

Values in the more acceptable range of 0.7 < q < 0.8 AU (and 0.80 > e > 0.75) certainly arise for 1488 < T < 1494, however, the desired date being clearly attainable with the help also of a close approach to the earth or -- more likely -- the presence of nongravitational forces. Further light could be shed on the problem by the recognition of precovery and/or recovery observations of 2003 EH_1, which is presumably a comet and that should in any case be considered a high-priority object for further study. [IAUC 8252, 2003 December 8]

Additional observations of the object were made at the end of December 2003 and early January 2004 from ESO, La Silla and these, together with a revised orbit appeared on MPEC 2004-N22 [2004 July 5]. Brian Marsden notes-

This is the presumed parent of the Quadrantid meteors (cf. IAUC 8252). The recovery observations are still insufficient to shed much light on the suggested identity with comet C/1490 Y1.
It is currently a southern hemisphere object and approaching aphelion, so a difficult object to observe at 24th magnitude.

Source-

New Comets Discovered in 2003 (Updated June 3, 2005)