How to Watch the Radiant Geminid Meteor Shower Tonight

Summary

The Year’s Best and Brightest Meteor Shower Peaks This Weekend. Here’s How to Watch the Radiant Geminids A waning crescent moon should make for a fairly dark sky, allowing viewers to see up to 150 shooting stars per hour The Geminid meteor shower in 2017 Jeff Sullivan via Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Skywatchers, rejoice. It’s once again time to watch what is often considered the best and brightest meteor shower of the year. The Geminids will peak this weekend—from the night of December 13 into the morning of December 14—lighting up our skies with colorful, glowing streaks. If conditions are just right, you can spot up to 150 meteors per hour, according to the American Meteor Society. The best strategy to see these fast, typically yellow “shooting stars” is to find a dark location free of light pollution and eye the sky from around 10 p.m. until dawn, per NASA. Give your eyes about 30 minutes to adjust to the darkness and avoid looking at your phone. Spotting meteors can be a waiting game, so make sure to stay patient and wrap yourself in proper winter gear. The meteors should soon stand out, streaking across the sky at 21 miles per second. “The other stars are going to be all stationary, so you’ll see this moving across the sky, and it’ll leave a little tail behind it,” says Bethany Cobb Kung, an astronomer at George Washington University, to Adithi Ramakrishnan at the Associated Press. Although the meteors look like they originate from the constellation Gemini—a location called a “radiant”—your best bet is to not look directly toward that smattering of stars, but 45 degrees away from it, per the Planetary Society. Additionally, the moon will be a waning crescent that night, only around 30 percent full. Keep in mind that moonrise will be around 2 a.m. local time, which could interfere a bit with your viewing party. “Potential observers have the choice to observe prior to moonrise or to look toward the west with the moon at their back after 2 a.m.,” says Robert Luns...