The Best Meteor Shower of the Year Is Coming—Here’s How to Watch

If you want to get into stargazing successful 2025, there’s inactive a accidental to drawback immoderate of the champion meteor showers of the year. Also known arsenic shooting stars, meteors hap erstwhile Earth’s orbital way crosses a way of debris near by a comet and that worldly burns up successful the Earth’s atmosphere. Watching a meteor ablution is 1 of the astir accessible ways to prosecute with the nighttime sky.

The adjacent ablution are the Geminids, a engaged and agleam ablution that peaks successful mid-December, offering the accidental to spot hundreds of shooting stars each hour. This is conscionable 1 of 9 large meteor showers that grace skies passim the year, and details of erstwhile they volition look successful the bluish hemisphere are listed below—so people your 2026 calendar for these.

The Next Big Meteor Shower: The Geminids

The Geminids are progressive from astir December 4 to December 17, peaking overnight from December 13 to December 14. They person a crisp peak, truthful the nighttime of the 13th is the champion clip for skywatching.

The Geminids are the astir spectacular meteor ablution of the year. In summation to boasting up to 120 oregon adjacent 150 meteors per hr during its peak, this meteor ablution is besides the brightest and astir colorful of the year.

The Geminids are bright, slow-moving meteors that often person yellowish tones, but they tin beryllium a scope of different colors, including green, blue, white, red, oregon orange. And dissimilar astir meteors, which are caused by comet debris, the Geminids are the remnants of an asteroid.

The nighttime that the Geminids peak, their radiant, the constellation Gemini, volition beryllium supra the skyline each nighttime and volition scope its highest constituent astir 2 americium section time, truthful meteors volition beryllium disposable astir the full night.

That aforesaid night, the satellite volition beryllium astir 32 percent illuminated and volition emergence astir 1:30 americium successful the eastbound US, truthful if you ticker this ablution soon aft midnight, the moonlight won’t interfere with your viewing experience.

How to Watch a Meteor Shower

You don’t request immoderate peculiar instrumentality to spot a meteor shower—in fact, utilizing devices similar binoculars oregon telescopes really prevents you from seeing meteors, due to the fact that they question excessively accelerated to beryllium seen done the lenses of specified equipment. All you request are your eyes, a acheronian entity with small to nary moonlight, and a determination that’s distant from excess light, arsenic moonlight and airy contamination tin lavation retired shooting stars.

Note that the satellite appears (rises) and disappears (sets) successful the nighttime entity astatine antithetic times depending connected what clip portion you are in. All moonrise/moonset times successful this portion are for the eastbound US. You tin usage tools similar Time and Date’s moonrise/moonset calendar oregon this instrumentality from the US Naval Observatory to cheque the precise moonrise/moonset times successful your nonstop location.