Geminid Meteor Shower 2016

Geminid Radiant in Gemini

Every year there are many meteor showers that arrive on schedule, resulting from the fact that Earth travels through well-established regions of dust and particles on its annual trek around the Sun. The Geminids are one of the year's best, reliably peaking as the Earth passes through the remants of asteroid 3200 Phaethon on December 13th and 14th each year.

One of the most important factors in viewing a meteor shower is to find a dark sky and this year, unforunately, this will be very difficult due to the fact that the full Moon coincides with the peak of the Geminids. So although many meteors will streak into the upper atmosphere and burn up, most won't be visible because their light will be drowned out by the glowing moonlight in our atmosphere.

That being said, if the weather is clear and you have warm clothing, it will be a fine night to just sit out in your garden or a park or on a mountainside and look anyhow. The Geminids reach their peak much earlier than most meteor showers, so a pleasant hour of viewing in the evening should reveal a few of the brighter meteors. Just temper your expectations and you will have a nice night. You won't see hundreds of meteors per hour, but then again, there will be plenty of stars and if you have binoculars, you can turn it into an evening of reacquaining yourself with the brighter stars and nebulae of the winter sky as Orion climbs high into the eastern sky after sunset and Pegasus dominates the sky overhead.

Here are excellent online resources for further reading on meteor showers:

Sky & Telescope

NASA

EarthSky

Image courtesy of Sky & Telescope.