The Geminid meteor shower is named Geminids due to a trail of meteors traced back to the constellation Gemini. The Geminids meteor shower is considered by many to be the best meteor shower of the year. It produces the brigghtest meteors of any shower and can be observed on December 13th and 14th.

Along with producing some of the brighterst meteors of any shower, the Geminids produce a large number of multicolored meteors every hour once it reaches its peak.

The Geminids are a particularly interesting meteor shower as the numbers of meteors observed per hour actually appears to be increasing each year. Meteors are often called 'shooting stars' but in reality, meteors are not connected with stars at all. In fact they are tiny pieces of debris (often no bigger than a grain of sand) which hit our atmosphere at very high speed and instantly vaporise.

Geminid meteors are in fact tiny pieces of an unusual comet-like asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon. Each year our planet intersects the stream of debris which is left behind by this asteroid as it orbits the Sun once every 523 days.

Peak: The highest point in a meteor shower.
3200 Phaethon: The name of the asteroid from which the Geminid meteors come from.

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The Geminids are a meteor shower caused by an object named 3200 Phaethon, which is thought to be an extinct comet. The meteors from this shower can be seen in mid-December and usually peak around 12-14 of the month. The Geminid shower is thought to be intensifying every year and recent showers have seen 120-160 meteors per hour under optimal conditions. The Geminids were first observed only 150 years ago, much more recently than other showers such as the Perseids and Leonids.

The Northern Hemisphere or northern hemisphere (1) is the half of a planet that is north of the equator—the word hemisphere literally means 'half ball'. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator. Earth's northern hemisphere contains most of the land and about 90% of the human population.

1 -Merrriam Webster's Online Dictionary (based on Collegiate vol., 11th ed.) 2006. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc.