Get ready for – hopefully – a beautiful night, as the conditions are particularly favorable this year.

Every year there are a few beautiful star showers visible. And the Geminids, the second largest annual meteor shower in the sky, are certainly one of them. Next week we can see them shining in the night sky again!

Next week

The maximum of the Geminids meteor shower will take place on the night of Monday 13 to Tuesday 14 December. According to Marc van der Sluys of sky.observation.com conditions are particularly favorable this year. And so we can spot up to 110 ‘shooting stars’ per hour in clear weather!

Falling stars?
Although meteors are popularly referred to as shooting stars, the flashes of light you see shooting across the sky have nothing to do with stars at all. The flashes of light are created because space debris – often small particles, no larger than a grain of sand – ends up in the Earth’s atmosphere approximately 100 kilometers above our heads. The space debris enters the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed, slowing it down and heating it. The air around the debris particle is also heated and starts to glow. And this is how the flash of light that we see from Earth is created.

The peak of the Geminids is quite short at less than 24 hours, so that the maximum regularly falls unfavorably. However, because the peak this year is around 5 a.m. and the moon has just set, conditions are very favorable this year. Because that means the moonlight won’t be a distraction.

Meteors

How will the night unfold? From Monday to Tuesday, about 25 to 40 meteors per hour can be seen around midnight, it is predicted sky.observation.com. As the night goes on, that number increases. For example, it is expected that around 4 a.m. – in the southwest – about 100 to 120 Geminids per hour; even slightly more than last year. The last time the peak was this high in our regions was in 2009. According to Van der Sluys, the next time will not be until 2064, although 2044 and 2063 are fairly close.

The image shows a map of the starry sky heading southwest on December 14 at 3:45 a.m., when most of the Geminids are visible. The (green) bar at the bottom is the horizon. The (yellow) circle indicates the point in the sky from which the meteors appear; the tracks represent meteors (schematic). The figures are the constellations; the name is mentioned in the constellation. Image: sky.observation.com

Geminids are characterized by their large numbers, brightness, yellowish color and the short tracks they leave behind. In addition, they can reach speeds of up to 125,000 kilometers per hour. That may sound a lot, but for meteors this is not very fast or slow.

Name

The meteor shower has been given the name Geminids because the star shower seems to come from the constellation Gemini (Gemini). This constellation is found in the evening above the eastern horizon and in the morning above the western horizon. But in reality, it’s thanks to asteroid (and possibly extinct comet) Phaethon. Because the earth in its orbit around the sun moves through the debris cloud, we see the meteor shower around the same date every year.

So get ready for – hopefully – a beautiful night! Although of course the weather also has to be a bit nice. You don’t need a telescope or binoculars to observe the meteors. Find a dark place and look up. The darker the better, because then you can also see the fainter meteors in the sky. And oh, put on an extra warm sweater and jacket.