The Most Stunning Meteor Shower of 2021 Peaks Tonight—Here‘s When and How to Watch It.
The 2021 Geminids meteor shower will peak on the night of Monday, December 13 into the early morning of Tuesday, December 14.
The moon will likely interfere with your view until it sets at around 2 a.m., leaving a few hours of prime viewing time before sunrise.
Up to 120 meteors will be visible every hour at its peak, NASA says, and the shower will be active until December 17.
Don’t wish away the rest of the year just yet: 2021 has one more cosmic treat in store for us. One of the most stunning meteor showers of the year reaches its height tonight, bringing hundreds of shooting stars along with it.
The 2021 Geminids meteor shower will peak on the night of Monday, December 13 into the early morning of Tuesday, December 14, NASA says; in case you don’t get a chance to see it tonight, the shower will remain active through Friday, December 17. Although the Geminids are visible for most of the planet, NASA explains that North America has an especially great view of the part of the sky where they appear.
Known as “the strongest meteor shower of the year” and producing “bright and intensely colored” shooting stars, according to the American Meteor Society, the Geminid meteor shower appears every December to end the year on a high note. At its peak, the show can produce up to 120 shooting stars every hour, NASA notes.
“Rich in green-colored fireballs, the Geminids are the only shower I will brave cold December nights to see,” wrote Bill Cooke, the lead for NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, in a statement.
The moon is 80% full tonight, meaning it might wash out the Geminids as they shoot across the sky. But that’s only for the first part of the night, per NASA—the moon should set at about 2 a.m. local time, wherever you are, leaving a dark, wide-open sky that’s ideal for meteor-watching, at least until the sun starts to rise.
Although most meteor showers originate from comets, NASA says, the annual Geminid meteor shower comes from an asteroid named 3200 Phaethon. Each shower is named after its radiant—the point in the sky where its meteors appear to originate—and the Geminids take their name from the constellation Gemini.
To give yourself the best chance of catching a shooting star (or 120), bundle up, lay on your back in an area with as little artificial light as possible with your feet facing south, and look straight up. After giving your eyes a few minutes to adjust, and with a little luck, you’ll start seeing meteors fly across the sky. Is there any better way to wave goodbye to 2021?
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