Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks December 13/14 and We Could See More Fireballs

Update: If it is cloudy you can watch the shower on Facebook as Nasa Meteor Watch will be going live on Monday December 14 at 9:00pm EST.

The Geminid meteor shower (Dec 4 to Dec 17) is considered to be one the best annual showers. This shower is the result of debris from an asteroid or extinct comet (3200 Phaethon) entering the atmosphere.

The best night to observe this shower is on the night of Dec 13/14 when it peaks (01:00 UT) . You can start watching for meteors in the early evening of Dec 13 and continue watching for several hours. If you are in a dark location you could see on average one meteor per minute. This year the light of the moon will not outshine some of the fainter meteors as moon will be in its new phase.

One good way to view meteors is to just look up and watch the sky in a dark open place unobstructed by trees or buildings. You may catch some meteors out of the corner of your eye as it is impossible to be looking everywhere at once. As well as meteors from a specific shower (that will appear to radiate from the same place called a radiant) there are also sporadic meteors at the rate of a few per hour. Meteor showers are typically named for the constellation where this radiant is located. You can use sky charts that are available online or one of the many apps available to help you find the meteor shower’s radiant. Look for the constellation Gemini for this shower.

NASA's All-sky Fireball Network camera’s have already picked up 18 fireballs as of December 10 (update: 89 as of December 13) over the US from this shower. Earlier this month some people were lucky enough to spot one or more of the spectacular fireballs in Ontario. It was just coincidental timing for at least two (update: three) of those fireballs as analysis of the orbits of two (update: three) of those bright fireballs indicate that they were not Geminid meteors.

Update: A fourth bright fireball was seen in Southern Ontario this month on Thursday Dec 10 at 7:26 EST. Using observations from the University of Western Ontario's Southern Ontario Meteor Network in conjuction with NASA’s All-sky Fireball observations they estimate that the object weighed about 1 kg and had a diameter of 10 cm. This asteroid fragment was travelling at a speed of 116,000 kilometers per hour. See this NASA Meteor Watch post for pictures and more details including a map of the trajectory. The trajectory starts just west of London and ends near Port Lambton just on the other side of the border.

Credit: NASA All-sky Fireball Network

If you happen to get lucky and catch a fireball it won’t matter how dark the sky is as they light up the entire sky for a few seconds as they streak across it. A fireball is defined as a bright meteor that has survived its entry through the earth’s atmosphere and scientists are very interested in locating meteorites from it. As well as human observations many fireballs have been caught on dash cams and security cameras. Some fireballs also produce a sonic boom a second or two after they pass overhead. The colour of a fireball is an important observation as it is dependent on the chemical composition of the meteor. You could even see an especially bright one during the day like the one on Dec 2, 2020.

If you spot a fireball you can report it to the American Meteor Society or the International Meteor Organization. NASA has a database of fireballs if you are curious about a previous fireball.

References and further reading:

American Meteor Society
AMS Meteor Shower Calendar
International Meteor Organization
NASA’s All Sky Fireball Network
NASA’s Space Place is a great place to explore science with your kids