Year’s ‘Best’ Cosmic Light Show to Grace Skies Across the Globe This Week

Stargazers around the world are in for a festive treat this week as the last meteor shower of the year lights up the night sky in the form of the Geminids.

So named due to the illusion that the meteors are flying outwards from the constellation of Gemini, the Geminids are often considered to be one of the most impressive—if not “the best”—meteor shower of the year, according to astronomers.

The Geminids, which run between November 19 and December 24 this year, are due to be most visible late on December 13 and in the early morning of December 14. The shower itself is expected to peak at around 2 p.m. EST, or 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, meaning that the best viewing will be just before dawn on Wednesday night. This year may provide an even more spectacular show than usual, as the moon is new and therefore not due to outshine the shooting stars as they fall to Earth.

The Geminids occur every year in early December due to the Earth passing through a trail of ice and dust left behind by a space rock called 3200 Phaethon. This asteroid is around 3 miles across, and orbits the sun in a long, oval-shaped ellipsis every 1.4 years, traveling closer to the sun than Mercury and further away than Mars. The Geminids are unusual in that they are caused by an asteroid, as most other meteor showers like the Perseids, Leonids, and Taurids result from a comet passing near the Earth.

“When [comets and asterioids are] far from the sun, where it is nice and cold, nothing much happens—and all you’d see of the comet is a small icy body,” Jonti Horner, an astrophysics professor at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, told Newsweek. “But when a comet gets close to the sun, its surface heats up, causing the ices there to ‘sublime’—to go from being a solid to a gas (without being a liquid in the middle, so they don’t melt then boil, but rather they just skip liquid entirely).”

As a comet or asteroid passes through the inner solar system, it sheds a plume of ice and rocky debris, leaving a trail in its wake.

“[Gas erupts] from the comet’s surface, and that carries with it dust and debris from the comet’s surface. That dust and debris spread out into space around the comet’s orbit, moving on almost the same path as the comet. Over time, the dust spreads out further, moving around the sun on a similar orbit to the comet,” Horner said.

If this trail of debris intersects with Earth’s orbit around the sun, as 3200 Phaethon’s trail does, then the dust will fall into the Earth’s atmosphere in high concentrations as it passes through the cloud, resulting in a meteor shower.

“The dust crashes into our atmosphere and ablates about 80 kilometers (50 miles) above the ground, visible from the ground as a meteor or ‘shooting star,'” Horner said.

This happens around the same time each year, when the Earth reaches the point in its orbit where the asteroid left its trail. The Geminids are one of the most spectacular showers, with up to 100 meteors being seen per hour in the Northern Hemisphere.

Those hoping to get a good glimpse of the shower are advised to avoid light pollution, and wrap up warm if in the wintery Northern Hemisphere.

“If the sky is clear, to view the meteor shower, it is best to be outside for at least 15-20 minutes to allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness,” Samantha Rolfe, technical tutor at the University of Hertfordshire, told Newsweek.

“Ideally, you should try and get away from any streetlighting, but make sure you are in a safe place, and it is possible to view from a garden or local park,” she said. “Dress for the weather and try to watch for as long as possible as it is not possible to predict when meteors will occur. Try and observe as much of the sky as possible, blankets on the ground lying down or using deck chairs is a good way to do this.”

The new moon will help the meteors be visible in the dark, as it won’t be providing any additional light pollution. The meteors will appear to be originating from Gemini, just above the constellation of Orion, which contains two of the top 25 brightest stars in the sky, Castor and Pollux.

“The Geminids shower can produce meteors all night and appear in any part of the sky, but are likely best when the constellation of Gemini is highest in the sky,” Rolfe said.

If you miss the peak, don’t fret: the shower will still be visible until December 24, but the meteors will become increasingly less frequent with every day that passes after Thursday.

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