Imagine the scene: a starry night in mid-December. As your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, you start to see movement in the sky. At some point you definitely see a shooting star – properly called a meteor. Welcome to what many people think is the year's best meteor shower, the Geminids.

Geminids – a December Spectacle

You can see the Geminid meteors all around the sky. However if you see a meteor and imagine its path backwards, it should take you back to Pollux, one of the two bright stars of the constellation Gemini. We see the Geminids as if they were all originating there - that point is called the radiant.

If that's not where a meteor seems to originate, it's what we call a sporadic. These are the ones that are seen every night coming from random direction. The excitement of a meteor shower isn't their origins, but that you're likely to see lots more meteors than usual.

The peak is expected late night/early morning of December 13/14, but Geminids are already being spotted.

My son in law and I were discussing the telescope and so I suggested this to him for my grandsons.

Great idea, Just need a clear night - can be hard to arrange that! - and there are meteors to see, but also some prominent winter constellations, and also satellites. All of this just needs your eyes, but with a telescope or binoculars, the Moon's worth a look, but will affect dark adaptation for awhile.

Get them interested young - my grandsons are 8 and 5. I picked up a book the night sky for kids.

Google doodles have doodled the Geminids. A series of slides takes us through the asteroid Phaeton coming past, leaving a trail of debris, and the debris as meteors.

And you might be lucky enough to see the real thing!

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1812/Geminids-DLopez1024.jpg

The dark sky before dawn during the Geminid peak yesterday morning produced this skyscape from six hours of expsoures. Here's a fantastic Geminid skyscape made from exposures taken over six hoursat the Teide National Park on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. In addition to the meteors, we can see Orion left of center, the Hyades and Aldebaran near the Pleiades toward the right, and Comet 46P Wirtanen. IThe comet is at its closest now - in this picture look for the faint green coma below the Pleiades.

Image Credit & Copyright: Daniel López (El Cielo de Canarias)