Skip to main content

How to watch the Geminids meteor shower tonight

What's Up: December 2020 Skywatching Tips from NASA

December looks like a fun month for stargazers, with a spectacular meteor shower promised for the middle of the month — clear skies permitting, of course.

Recommended Videos

Known as the Geminids, the meteor shower occurs annually as Earth moves through the trail of debris left behind by asteroid 3200 Phaethon.

These thrilling “shooting star” events will be visible from Dec. 4 to Dec. 17, with activity peaking on the evening of Dec. 13 and into the following morning.

“The Geminids produce a good number of meteors most years, but they’re made even better this year as the shower’s peak coincides with a nearly new moon. thus making for darker skies, with no moonlight to interfere with the fainter meteors,” NASA said.

For the best possible viewing experience, NASA recommends heading to a spot well away from bright city lights to ensure that urban light pollution doesn’t get in the way. Lie flat on the ground with your feet pointing south, look up to the night sky, watch, and wait (but don’t fall asleep).

If you’re interested, Digital Trends has some great tips on how to photograph a meteor shower.

Jupiter and Saturn

Jupiter and Saturn also get a look-in this month, with the first three weeks of December offering a chance to see the two planets move closer in the sky than they’ve appeared in two decades.

NASA suggests looking for Jupiter and Saturn in the southwest in the hour after sunset, adding, “On December 21st, the two giant planets will appear just a tenth of a degree apart — that’s about the thickness of a dime held at arm’s length.”

You can view both planets with the naked eye, but their apparent closeness also means they’ll be visible in the same field of view through binoculars or a small telescope.

“This event is called a ‘great conjunction,’” NASA explained. “These occur every 20 years this century as the orbits of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn periodically align making these two outer planets appear close together in our nighttime sky.”

Finally, the December solstice occurs on day 21 of this month. In the Northern Hemisphere this is the winter solstice, and in the Southern Hemisphere it’s — you guessed it — the summer solstice. Those in the Northern Hemisphere will also know December 21 as the shortest day in terms of daylight hours, while for those in the Southern Hemisphere it’s … you guessed again.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
How to watch NASA launch its cosmic detective mission, SPHEREx
NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer), a space telescope, is situated on a work stand ahead of prelaunch operations at the Astrotech Processing Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025.

Update: The launch has been moved to Thursday, March 4. NASA states, "The teams need additional time to evaluate launch vehicle hardware data." The article has been updated accordingly.

This coming week sees the launch of a new NASA astrophysics mission, SPHEREx. This space telescope will investigate the origins of the universe, looking at how everything that exists went from being a tiny dot in the milliseconds after the big bang to being trillions of times that size.

Read more
How to watch this week’s spacewalk from the International Space Station
Astronaut Suni Williams is pictured during a six-hour spacewalk for science and maintenance on the International Space Station on Jan. 16, 2025.

This week holds another exciting event at the International Space Station (ISS) as two NASA astronauts will head out on a six-and-a-half-hour long spacewalk this Thursday, January 30. This is the second U.S. spacewalk this year, and preparations are underway to get the astronauts, their spacesuits, and the station ready for the event.

It will be NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams performing the spacewalk, who gained worldwide fame after traveling to the space station on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft on what was supposed to be a one-week mission. The pair have now been in space for over six months, as issues with the Starliner meant that it returned to Earth without them, and they joined the regular ISS crew.

Read more
How to watch Firefly launch its Blue Ghost mission to the moon on Tuesday night
Rendering of the Blue Ghost on the moon's surface.

This week will feature a historic event as Firefly Aerospace launches its first mission to the moon. The Blue Ghost mission aims to put a lander on the moon carrying NASA science experiments, as part of NASA's efforts to get private companies involved in lunar exploration. If the landing succeeds, it will be just the second soft lunar landing by a private company, following the Intuitive Machines Odyssey lander last year.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission will launch late at night on Tuesday, January 14, or Wednesday, January 15. Using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Blue Ghost will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch will be liveistreamed by NASA, and you can watch it either on YouTube or by using the video embedded below:

Read more