Geminid meteor shower- All you need to know

For best viewing, NASA advises moving away from bright lights that can interfere with seeing the celestial show.

People willing to fearless the outdoor cold temperatures will be treated to one of the best meteor showers of the year tonight.

This year’s display will be particularly bright, according to astronomers, as the sky is expected to be particularly dark because the moon is at the thin crescent stage.

Stargazers should make sure they go outside tonight to catch a meteor shower set to light up the sky a few hours after midnight. The Geminid meteor shower occurs each year during mid-December, and produces the most meteors per hour of any other shower. This year, the asteroid will be closest to Earth the night of Saturday, Dec. 16, when it zips by at a distance of about 6.4 million miles (10.3 million kilometers), which is almost 30 times farther away from Earth as the moon is.

Meteor showers are named after the location of the radiant, usually a star or constellation close to where they appear in the night sky.

The 3200 Phaethon may have collided with another object is the distant past which produced the stream of particles that hurdle across earth’s atmosphere and create a meteor shower.

But will you be able to see them in central Pa.?

The Gemini constellation is to the right of that and above it.

Viewers will get a particularly good look tonight thanks to a dark sky. The debris from the asteroid will give us our meteor show Wednesday night.

The Royal Greenwich Observatory said: “Hunting for meteors, like the rest of astronomy, is a waiting game, so it’s best to bring a comfy chair to sit on and to wrap up warm as you could be outside for a while”. BuzzFeed News will livestream views of the Geminid meteor show from Slooh’s network of cameras and telescopes across Europe from 6-8 p.m. PST on the BuzzFeed Science Facebook page.

Not only is the shower predicted to be one of the most dazzling shows ever with around 100 meteors per hour, the spectacular display will also be visible from nearly every country in the world.

The best viewing time will start just before midnight and last until 3:30 a.m. on December 14th.