Geminids meteor shower
Next peak: 14 December 2026, 13:00 UTC. Up to 150 meteors an hour under an ideally dark sky.
The richest shower of the year, from Gemini near Castor. Its source is not a comet but the asteroid Phaethon. The meteors are slow and bright, and they fall from the evening on, all night.
The radiant lies in the constellation Gemini. The meteors appear all over the sky, though; their trails only point back to it.
Peaks until 2030
| Peak (UTC) | Moon | Conditions |
|---|---|---|
| 14 Dec 2026, 13:00 | 25 % | good, little moonlight |
| 14 Dec 2027, 19:00 | 98 % | poor, bright moon |
| 14 Dec 2028, 01:00 | 5 % | good, little moonlight |
| 14 Dec 2029, 08:00 | 65 % | poor, bright moon |
| 14 Dec 2030, 14:00 | 82 % | poor, bright moon |
Moon: how much of its disc is lit. The nights before and after the peak are often hardly weaker.
When you see the most
- London: around 02:00 local time, the radiant 71° up
- New York: around 02:00 local time, the radiant 82° up
- Sydney: around 02:45 local time, the radiant 23° up
Best far from lights; give your eyes a quarter of an hour to adapt, no binoculars, with as much sky in view as possible. The higher the radiant, the more meteors.