How to see the 2021 Geminids Meteor Shower

When is the best time

Monday night/tomorrow night is the peak of the annual Geminids meteor shower. This meteor shower is considered the best of the year. However, it is often neglected by many because the perseids have a good amount of meteors an hour too, and it is warm and clear more often at the time it occurs in August, compared to December's gloomy depressing cloudy days, which it can be cloudy for as long as a week or two at times. However, if skies do favor it, like it will for us Northeastern Americans, whether it be here in Pennsylvania, or even down into the Mid-Atlantic States like North Carolina, or even all of New England, where clear skies are expected for the peak this year. But why would it be better than the perseids if conditions are perfect? Well, the Perseids produce up to 60 meters an hour, or a meteor every minute, while the Geminids can produce meteors of rates of up to 100, to 120, and in good years, it may even reach 150 to 170 meteor an hour. In the average media rates of 100 to 120 an hour, the gemin is there for produce two meteors every minute on average, with some of those minutes in between being only one minute. However, meteors in meteor showers have highs and lulls, so don't be surprised if you see two to even three or even four meteors in just a few seconds if you are looking in a large enough area of sky. The only time the Geminids are not the most active of the year, is when the parent comet of the Leonid meteor shower earlier in november, Temple Tuttle, makes it's one in every 33 year visit to Earth. When that happens, the meteoroid dust debris trail it left behind from its last visit 33 years before it's earth. When that happens, media rates at the minima of 200 occur an hour. However, in 1966, there were some brief periods during the peak night of the leonids that there were reports of 2,400 meteors a minute, and that is not a typo, it was recorded. That would mean that those rates at that 2,400 meteor a minute rate, would lead to 144,000 meteors per hour. That's so many meteors that you may think that so many of them would have wound up damaging the Earth or threatening the earth, but that's not the case. No matter how many meteors occur in a meteor shower an hour, most of these meteors are only the size of a pebble or a grain of sand. It is very rare that meteors the size large enough to impact Earth occur, though that does happened once in awhile, and you may have seen it on the news a time or two before. And sometimes meteors that are really bright that don't even impact the Earth have made it on to the news, such as one that was seen up here in the Northeast on September 30th in the morning last year. Anyways, what else is going to be going on. When are you going to be able to see them? Well, if we have lucked out in these clear skies would have happened last year, you all would be in for the best display of meteors in your lives if you've ever seen meteor showers before. One video I watched about last year's shower, somebody recorded 169 meteors in just an hour. This year, those same numbers of meteors may fall, but some of them will be washed out by a gibbous moon this time. On the night of the peak, the moon will be about 79 to 81% full. However, it will set at 3:00 or just up to 15 minutes after 3:00 in the morning. Pretty narrow time, since here in the Northeast it starts getting light in the westernmost parts of the Eastern standard time zone at about 6:30, while meanwhile of course the moon would set before 3:00 at the easternmost end of the Eastern standard Time zone, in fact it would probably set it about 15 minutes to 25 minutes after 2 there, well mean while the Sun would be close enough to the horizon that Don would be beginning to break at about 5:45. Regardless where you are, don't think that if you're in a more eastern or western part of the same time zone that you'll get extra time to see meteors, everyone's going to only get about 3 hours of total darkness to see it. You can extend that time by hours more though if you can manage to block out the Moon while it's still above the horizon. So if you do that you may pay a price, because you also block out some more of the sky in addition and therefore may miss a few meteors in addition to that. However, the Geminids are so numerous that that wouldn't really matter, and it may even still be worth watching despite the moon will be out, because Geminids tend to be bright, and leave some ionized trails also, though the ionized trails will only be visible once the Moon sets. And of course, where are the geminids? Well, you can see the word Gemini in there and that already ring a bell, because everyone knows about the constellation Gemini, they may not know what it looks like, but they'll know it by name because it's one of the zodiac signs. It is the third zodiac sign. It is from May 21st to June 21st. Since that's on the other side of the year, that also gives you more addition. If the moon didn't exist, because we're on the other side of the year compared to when Geminis in the sun, Gemini is almost completely opposite the sun, therefore, the radiant point for the Geminids is up almost all night, and is very good and well placed unlike most other meteor showers by 10:00 p.m, for most others, such as the perseids we mentioned earlier, they're better placed after midnight or even 2:00 a.m, but the radiant for this meteor shower is very high from about 10:00 p.m. until about 45 minutes to an hour before dawn breaks. And although the moon will be setting so late, you can still find Earth grazer meteors a little before midnight. These are long and bright meteors. So keep your eyes peeled for the Geminids.