Where to see and peak times

One of the best meteor showers of the year reaches its peak this week, and if conditions are clear, experts say skywatchers could enjoy about 120 meteors per hour.

The annual Geminid meteor shower has been active since late November, and the meteors will peak Wednesday night into early Thursday.

The Geminids are considered one of the best and most reliable meteor showers of the year. According to NASA. Under ideal conditions—clear weather and away from light pollution—stargazers can see more than one meteor every minute across the night sky.

This year, there will be minimal moonlight interfering with the sky’s colorful display. NASA said.

Geminid meteors are known to be bright, fast meteors, and they often appear yellow or white, although they can also be green, red and even blue.

“Most meteors appear colorless or white, but the Geminid meteors appear green. They are beautiful meteors!” Bill Cook, chief of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, he said in a blog post Advance this month.

Meteors can be seen anywhere in the world and are best viewed at night and in the early hours before dawn. Meteors will appear streaming from the constellation Gemini, which will rise in the northeastern sky.

According to NASA, Gemini is best viewed by sitting or lying down with your feet facing south. The best vantage point is to be away from city lights and other forms of light pollution, in a place that allows you to see as much of the sky as possible.

It’s also best to allow your eyes about 30 minutes to adjust to the dark. The meteors will begin to appear around 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. local time, but skywatchers who go out even later — between midnight and 2 a.m. — may enjoy an even more impressive celestial display. For people in the Northern Hemisphere, this likely means packing up and preparing for cold winter conditions.

Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through large clouds of debris left behind by comets or asteroids. When these particles collide with the planet’s atmosphere, they evaporate and appear as fast-moving streaks of light across the sky.

Geminids come from the remains of the debris of an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon, which takes 524 days to orbit the sun. The small space rock, about 3.2 miles across, was first discovered in 1983.

Although Geminis peaks this week, the meteor shower will remain active until December 24, according to NASA.