Overview
Every December, the Geminids meteor shower lights up our skies. Considered to be the most spectacular meteor shower of the year, it's caused by a stream of debris, left by an asteroid dubbed the 3200 Phaethon, burning up in Earth's atmosphere.
The shower is expected to be visible from around 10.30pm in Sydney, 11pm in Melbourne, 10pm in Perth and 9pm in Brisbane on Saturday, December 14 through to the early morning on Sunday, December 15. The best time to catch an eyeful will be after midnight, when the moon has set and its light will not interfere, and before sunrise.
While some years you could catch as many as 120 meteors every 60 minutes, this year, unfortunately, there's almost a full moon (a waning gibbous), which will make it harder to see as many.
NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center, Jeff Dai.
But the Sydney Observatory says it's "still worth a try". So, get as far away from bright lights as possible — this could be a good excuse to head out of the city to a clear-skied camping spot — and pray for no clouds. To see the meteors, you'll need to give your eyes around 15–30 minutes to adapt to the dark (so try to avoid checking your phone) and look to the northeast.
The shower's name comes from the constellation from which they appear to come, Gemini. So that's what you'll be looking for in the sky. To locate Gemini, we recommend downloading the Sky Map app — it's the easiest way to navigate the night sky (and is a lot of fun to use even on a non-meteor shower night). If you're more into specifics, Time and Date also has a table that shows the direction and altitude of the Geminids.
The Geminids meteor shower will take place during the night on Saturday, December 14.
Top image: A composite of 163 photos taken over 90 minutes during the Geminids by Jeff Smallwood for Flickr.