Friday night is the peak time for the best performing meteor shower of the year, the Geminids.
The Geminids have been proven to reliably produce a large number of meteors per hour — up to 120 — in a dark sky and many of them are bright. Plus it’s the only major meteor shower during which you can see a good number of meteors starting at 9 p.m. instead of the hours just before dawn.
This year, as in 2022, a bright moon, which is full on Sunday, Dec. 15, will interfere with seeing fainter Geminids, but 15 brighter meteors per hour should be visible. Alas, the D.C. region’s weather forecast isn’t encouraging as clouds are expected, but check the sky for yourself to see how much cloud cover is present.
You do not need any equipment or know-how to enjoy the show — just find a place where you can put a lounge chair or blanket to see the sky. Starting at 9 p.m., look to the east for the constellation Gemini for which this meteor shower is named.
This year, the brightening red planet Mars makes it a cinch to find Gemini, as Mars is just below the constellation as 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 be seen during the night as well.
The best place to see the Geminids is a location away from lights and obstructions such as trees and buildings.
If you are a city dweller, you still may see the brightest Geminids, as long as you are not staring into a streetlight or nestled in among tall buildings.
The view of the Geminids is worth it from the suburbs as long as lights and obstructions are minimized as best you can. Out in the country, the mountains or along the beach are the best places to be.
The shower will continue all night until the sky brightens before dawn.
The key to watching the shower is being comfortable, and it’s particularly 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 Geminid numbers tend to peak overnight as the radiant rises higher in the sky, given the timing of maximum and the Moon’s presence, this might be a good year to spend more time watching during the evening hours. Weather gods permitting, I hope to be out from 9-11 p.m. local time, during which time the meteor streaming point (radiant) climbs from about 25° to 50° altitude. Starting even earlier, say around 6-7 p.m., is optimal for spotting earthgrazers — long, slow-moving meteors that strike the atmosphere tangentially. They streak upward from the northeastern horizon the way a rocket leaves a launch pad.”
The predicted peak of the 2024 Geminid meteor shower is Friday night, but you can see Geminids from Thursday, Dec. 12 to Friday, Dec. 20.
Each year at this time, our planet encounters a debris stream of rock particles made by Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. The Geminids is the only meteor shower caused by an asteroid or what astronomers call a rock 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 or falling stars.”
It is thought that the Geminids are brighter than other meteor showers because they involve larger and heavier debris than normal cometary dust and penetrate deeper into the atmosphere.
Hope we see some bright ones!
While watching the sky, check out the four planets that are easily seen. As it gets dark after sunset, brilliant Venus is in the southwest, Saturn is high in the south, bright Jupiter is in the east just below the waxing gibbous moon, while Mars rises in the east at 8 p.m.
I’ll have a story on that pesky moon Saturday.
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