Geminids, Best 2020 Meteor Show: How To See In Wilmington

WILMINGTON, MA — Grab the blankets, wake up the kids (or hire a sitter) and head out to a dark sky area to take in one of the greatest sky shows of the year — the annual Geminid meteor shower, which peaks over Wilmington Sunday to Monday.

The National Weather Service forecast for Wilmington calls for a partially cloudy Sunday night and a mostly clear night with a chance of snow Monday.

The only thing that makes the Geminid meteor shower — which runs now through Dec. 17 — take second place to August’s Perseid meteor shower is the late fall chill. The bright white, bold and quick Geminids reliably produce about 50 shooting stars an hour at the peak, and they’re known to kick out colorful green fireballs.

The best chance to see this spectacular sky show is around 2 a.m. local time on Monday, Dec. 14. But you should also see a fair number of shooting stars a few days earlier as the Geminid meteor shower builds toward its peak.

This year, there will be absolutely no pesky moonlight to get in the way of your viewing pleasure. And, if you head out far from urban light pollution, a moon-free night sky means it’s possible to see Geminid shooting stars at a rate of around 150 an hour.

But that’s under optimum viewing conditions. To see the greatest number of shooting stars, find a dark sky. From Massachusetts, the closest designated dark skies are in Quebec, northern Maine and Pennsylvania.

If that’s not possible, just know the number of visible meteors per hour drops to about 30 or 40 in the suburbs, and those in downtown city centers will see almost nothing at all.

Though the late-evening and early-morning hours offer the best chances to view the Geminids, early-evening skywatchers may catch a rare earthgrazer — that is a slow-moving, long-lasting meteor traveling horizontally across the sky.

If you’re watching for meteors on the mornings of Dec. 11-13, stick around until dawn breaks, when you’ll be able to see the two brightest orbs of the nighttime sky, the moon and Venus, ascending in the eastern sky.

The Geminid meteors fly as Earth passes through the massive trail of dusty debris left behind by the rocky object named 3200 Phaethon. The dust and grit burn up when they enter Earth’s atmosphere, causing the flurry of meteors.

Phaethon is one of the mysteries of the universe, according to NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke.

“It’s either a near-Earth asteroid or an extinct comet, sometimes called a rock comet,” he wrote in a blog on the agency’s website. “There is another object — an Apollo asteroid named 2005 UD — that is in a dynamically similar orbit to Phaethon, prompting speculation that the two were once part of a larger body that split apart or collided with another asteroid.”

There’s more:

“Most shower meteors are shed by comets when their orbits take them into the inner Solar System, but the Geminids may be the debris from this long-ago breakup or collision event. When you consider that the Geminid meteor stream has more mass than any other meteor shower, including the Perseids, whatever happened back then must have been pretty spectacular.”

The first known report of the Geminid meteor shower was in 1833, when it was seen from a riverboat moving slowly on the Mississippi River. It’s grown in intensity over the centuries as Jupiter’s gravity tugs particles from the source of the shower, the asteroid 3200 Phaethon, closer to the Earth.

The meteor shower radiates from the bright constellation Gemini (the twins). In the Northern Hemisphere, look in the southwestern sky for the constellation Orion — it’s the one with the three stars that make up the hunter’s “belt” — and then look up and to the left to find Gemini, which is high in the southwestern sky.

But don’t look directly at Gemini — you’ll miss some of the amazing tails associated with this wintertime favorite. Instead, look slightly away from the constellation.

Here are some tips to get the most out of your nighttime meteor-watching excursion:

• Give your eyes 30 minutes to an hour to adjust to the darkness.
• Lie flat on your back on a thick blanket or hammock, or sit back in a reclining lawn chair so you can see as much sky as possible. The meteors can be seen from any place in the sky but originate from the constellation Gemini
• Take along some hot drinks and snacks, and prepare to settle in. The Geminids reward patience. They often fly in spurts, but there could be lulls when you see no meteors at all.

December is jam-packed with reasons to look up at the sky.

The Ursid meteor shower comes quickly on the heels of the Geminids, running Dec. 17-25. It’s a minor meteor shower producing around five to 10 shooting stars at its Dec 21-22 peak. Viewing conditions are best after midnight. The first-quarter moon sets just after midnight, so dark skies will enhance meteor viewing. The meteors come from the constellation Ursa Minor but can be seen anywhere in the sky.

The Ursids' peak is timed this year with the winter solstice on Dec. 21. The winter solstice occurs when the Earth's sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. It's the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

A rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn also occurs on the first day of winter. The two planets appear perfectly aligned, something that hasn't happened since 2000. They will be so close to one another that they'll appear as one bright planet. To see it, look at the western sky just after sunset.

The last full moon of the year is on Dec. 30. Native Americans called it the full cold moon for reasons that are obvious, but it's also been called the moon before Yule and the full long night's moon.