How to watch one of the year's best meteor showers, the Geminids

It's clip for the Geminid meteor shower, 1 of the strongest of the year

NEW YORK -- It's clip for 1 of the strongest meteor showers of the year.

The Geminids highest this play and are disposable done mid-December, according to the American Meteor Society. The meteors thin to beryllium yellowish successful colour and tin beryllium seen crossed the globe, but the champion viewing happens successful the Northern Hemisphere.

Skygazers could spot up to 120 meteors per hr nether acheronian skies during the highest Saturday nighttime into Sunday's predawn hours, according to NASA.

Meteor showers look erstwhile fast-moving abstraction rocks deed Earth's ambiance and pain up, leaving down fiery tails — the extremity of a “shooting star.” Stray meteors are disposable from Earth connected immoderate fixed night, but much salient showers hap annually erstwhile the satellite passes done crowded streams of cosmic debris.

How breathtaking a ablution volition look from Earth depends connected galore factors including the magnitude of debris and the brightness of the moon, which tin overshadow the meteors' glow. The Geminids person a bully model for highest viewing earlier the satellite crashes the enactment aft midnight.

To bask the Geminid show, bundle up and task distant from metropolis lights, which tin drown retired fireballs. The meteor ablution volition look implicit the full sky, truthful look to the darkest portion oregon hunt for the Gemini constellation for which the ablution is named.

Lie successful a sleeping container oregon thin backmost successful a tract seat and hold 15 to 20 minutes for your eyes to get utilized to the darkness. That's erstwhile the meteors volition look arsenic tiny glows streaking crossed the sky.

“The different stars are going to beryllium each stationary, truthful you’ll spot this moving crossed the entity and it’ll permission a small process down it," said Bethany Cobb Kung, an astronomer with George Washington University.

Stay extracurricular and instrumentality successful the amusement for arsenic agelong arsenic the upwind allows. Avoid agleam lights from cellphones, which tin marque it harder for your eyes to set to nighttime darkness.

Most meteor showers travel from the leftovers of comets, but the Geminids originate from the sun-orbiting asteroid 3200 Phaethon.

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