2024’s brightest meteor shower has arrived. How to see the Geminids

Friday night is the peak time for the best meteor shower of the year, The Geminids.

The Geminids have been shown to produce large numbers of meteors per hour – up to 120 – in a dark sky and many of them are bright. In addition, it is the only major meteor shower where you can see a large number of meteors starting at 21.00 instead of the hours just before dawn.

This year, as in 2022, a bright full moon on Sunday, December 15, will interfere with seeing fainter Geminids, but 15 brighter meteors per hour should be visible. Unfortunately, the DC region forecast is not encouraging as clouds are expected, but check the sky for yourself to see how much cloud cover there is.

You don’t need any equipment or know-how to enjoy the show – just find a spot where you can put a lounge chair or blanket to watch the sky. Start at 9 p.m., look east for the constellation Gemini, after which this meteor shower is named.

This year, the bright red planet Mars makes it easy to find Gemini, as Mars is just below the constellation when it rises. A meteor that is part of the shower can be traced back to Gemini.

Sporadic meteors that are not part of the shower can also be seen during the night.

The best place to see the Geminids is somewhere away from light and obstructions such as trees and buildings.

If you’re a city dweller, you can still see the brightest Geminids as long as you’re not staring into a street light or perched on tall buildings.

The view of the Geminids is worth it from the suburbs, as long as light and obstructions are minimized as best you can. Out in the countryside, the mountains or along the beach are the best places to be.

The shower will continue throughout the night until the sky brightens before dawn.

The key to watching the shower is to be comfortable and it is especially important to stay warm. The Geminids can appear anywhere in the sky, but looking straight up gives you the widest viewing area – this is where a lounge chair or blanket comes in handy.

The Geminids are known to produce spectacular meteors called “Earthgrazers”. As described by Sky and telescope:

“Although the number of Geminids tends to peak overnight as the rays rise higher in the sky, given the timing of the maximum and the presence of the Moon, this may be a good year to spend more time watching during the evening hours. If weather gods permitting, I hope to be out by 21:00 to 23:00 local time, when the meteor shower point (radiant) rises from about 25° to 50° altitude. e.g., around 6-7 p.m., is optimal for spotting meteors – long, slow-moving meteors that strike the atmosphere upward like a rocket leaving a launch pad.”

The predicted peak of the 2024 Geminid meteor shower is Friday night, but you can see the Geminids from Thursday, December 12, to Friday, December 20.

Every year at this time, our planet encounters a debris flow of rocky particles made by Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. The Geminids are the only meteor shower caused by an asteroid or what astronomers call a stony comet – all others are due to cometary debris.

As Earth moves in its orbit around the sun, it collides with this rocky debris stream, and the particles hit our atmosphere at 22 miles per second to become “shooting stars or shooting stars.”

The Geminids are thought to be brighter than other meteor showers because they involve larger and heavier debris than normal comet dust and penetrate deeper into the atmosphere.

Hope we see some bright ones!

While looking at the sky, you can check out the four planets that are easy to see. As it gets dark after sunset, radiant Venus is in the southwest, Saturn is high in the south, luminous Jupiter is in the east just below the waxing gibbous moon, while Mars rises in the east at

I have a story about the pesky moon Saturday.

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