Gemenid meteor shower peaks Tuesday, but lunar eclipse may ruin light show

The annual Gemenid meteor shower peaks Tuesday night, although reports warn that a mostly full moon may wash out the light show.

In case it does, National Geographic has published a nice slideshow on what NASA calls "best annual meteor shower." the effect of Earth passing through a stream of space rock debris.

Meteor showers occurs when Earth passes through a stream of space rock debris. As the small rocks fly through the atmosphere, they burn up, creating shooting stars.

Geminid — so named because the shooting stars that make up the meteor shower appear to emanate from the constellation Gemini — was first reported in the 1830s, according to Canada's CBC. Since then, the Geminid shower has increased from a peak intensity of 20 meteors an hour to up to 120.

However, National Geographic wrote:

Despite this bounty, the Geminids don't usually get as much fanfare as the August Perseids, perhaps because the December shower falls close to the holiday season and during frosty weather in the Northern Hemisphere, where most of the shooting stars will be visible.

Geminid is known for its slow and bright meteors, some of them "yellowish in color," wrote astronomer Joe Rao on Space.com.

However, the total lunar eclipse on Dec. 10 threatens to ruin the show, according to Space.com.

"The lunar eclipse is gorgeous, but it's not very helpful for meteor watching," the head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., Bill Cooke, told the website. "This year, folks will get a nice double whammy with the lunar eclipse on the 10th, and then the Geminid peak on the night of the 13th, but it would be nice if we could just turn off the moon after the eclipse."

Geza Gyuk, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, told National Geographic that the best times to see the meteor shower were before the moon rose.

However, for those out under clear skies, "face northeast and look for meteors racing out from the shower's radiant—its namesake constellation, Gemini, which will be low on the horizon," Gyuk said.

"The other best chance will be in the very early morning of December 14, around 2 a.m., when the shower's radiant will be very high overhead," he said. "At that point, my advice will be to face west away from the moon and look for meteors streaking down from the sky."