The annual -- and usually impressive -- Geminid meteor will arrive this weekend as the Earth's orbit takes us through the debris and dust flung off a small asteroid. Viewing quality will, of course, be determined by your local weather.
Those willing to brave the cooler seasonal temperatures on Saturday and Sunday nights could be treated to shooting stars at the rate of one per minute from around 10 p.m. until dawn in their local time zone, experts say.
The naked eye will be sufficient to spot the meteors, assuming you can get to a dark location with an unobstructed view of the sky, they say.
"Go out late in the evening, lie back in a reclining lawn chair, and gaze up into the stars," says senior editor Alan MacRobert of Sky and Telescope magazine. "Relax, be patient, and let your eyes adapt to the darkness."
The meteor shower takes in name from its radiant, or perspective points of origin, centered on the constellation Gemini.
The constellation will start low in the eastern sky and climb overhead as the night progresses.
While most meteor showers are the result of the Earth moving through particles thrown off by comets as they travel around the solar system, the Geminid shower is a bit different; its source material comes from a small asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon.
Although the meteor shower has been observed annually since the middle of the 19th century, it was only with the 1983 discovery of the asteroid that its source was confirmed.
The Geminid shower, and another shower known as the Quadrantids, are the only major meteor showers not coming from comet material.
While most comets are composed of ice, dust, organic compounds and some amount of rocky materials, asteroids are almost completely composed of rocky materials and metals.
The Geminids shower is one of the most spectacular visible from the Earth because of the amount of debris that creates it, says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke.
"Of all the debris streams Earth passes through every year, the Geminids' is by far the most massive," he says. "When we add up the amount of dust in the Geminid stream, it outweighs other streams by factors of 5 to 500."
If you're unable to get outside, or if local weather gets in the way, there will be opportunities to join in online meteor viewing.
The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 will begin streaming coverage of the shower at 9 p.m. EST on Saturday, and the Slooh robotic observatory will also be covering it at 11 p.m. EST.
