Attention sky gazers! It’s that time of the year again. The annual Geminid meteor shower, which began Tuesday, will continue dazzling the night skies until Christmas Eve. Called the Geminids, the Northern Hemisphere’s brightest shooting stars will peak on December 13 and 14 with more than 120 meteors per hour. So, here’s all you need to know about the celestial spectacle:
When is the Geminid meteor shower?
Named after the constellation Gemini, the Geminid meteor shower is a yearly occurrence. Starting November 19, these shooting stars will be visible, given the ideal viewing conditions, through the night of December 24. It will produce the maximum number of meteors when the Gemini radiant is highest in the sky, at around 2 am. The Geminid meteor shower will reach its peak activity on the nights of December 13 and 14.
What are the Geminids?
“The Geminids are bright and fast meteors and tend to be yellow in colour,” per NASA. Unlike other prominent meteor showers- the Perseids and the Leonids, the Geminids are caused by a rocky object, not a comet. It produces one of the brightest shooting stars, with up to 120 meteors per hour at a speed of 21 miles per second, according to the American Meteor Society. While generally appear as bright streaks of yellow or white, the shower rarely produces green streaks.
“The Geminids are unusual as they are caused by an asteroid rather than a comet (most other meteor showers are due to comets). The asteroid is called 3200 Phaethon, it crosses the orbit of the Earth and as such it is classed as a near-Earth object (NEO), but is extremely unlikely to hit the Earth,” astronomer Sam Rolfe of the University of Hertfordshire in England, told Newsweek.
Where can you see the Geminid meteor shower?
The nearly 200-year-old meteor shower is best visible from the Northern Hemisphere. While they can be spotted in the Southern Hemisphere too, the number of meteors produced will be fewer as the Gemini is lower in the sky. Hence, the ideal viewing conditions would be after midnight to early morning.
“You need dark skies, and the presence of, for example, a full moon can stop you seeing the fainter meteors. So even a good potential shower can be ruined if we have a bright Moon over many days,” Daniel Brown, an associate professor in astronomy and science communication at Nottingham Trent University, told the outlet.
