When is the Geminid meteor shower? How to watch stunning spectacle light up the sky

Nasa says the display is 'one of the best and most reliable of the annual meteor showers'

The stunning Geminid meteor shower is about to rip across the sky.

The display, which Nasa says is “one of the best and most reliable of the annual meteor showers”, is about to pass overhead across the sky.

You should be able to see up to 100 shooting stars streak across the sky as bits of the asteroid known as 3200 Phaetheon break off and shine bright across the night sky.

The best times to see it are on Thursday and Friday night, when it reaches its peak. It should be visible from early on: one of the reasons this shower is so beloved is because it starts soon after nightfall, meaning that it should be going on while children are still awake and able to see it.

Getting a sight of the show is nearly as simple as going outside while it’s happening and looking up. There are things you can do to maximise your view, but one of the really notable things about this shower is how much it will shine through even in a brighter sky.

Still, you’ll get a better view if you head out to somewhere where there’s a little less dark pollution. Look for somewhere with a clear view of the sky without clouds or streetlights blocking it – but remember that no place is likely to be perfect, and you’ll still be able to see something no matter what the view.

Once you are looking up, point your view towards the Geminid constellation, from which the lights will seem to emanate. If you don’t know where that is, the easiest way to find it is probably to get an app like Dark Sky, which comes for free and gives you a map to the night sky’s stars.

But again that won’t matter so much, because the shower is just so widely dispersed. Wherever you look, you should see something, and you can follow them to the centre where the view will be best.

The other thing that can sometimes ruin such showers is the moon, which can shine bright in the sky and obscure the more dim spectacle of the meteor shower. But you should be fairly safe from that, too, since the moon is crescent at the moment and so should be reasonably dark in the sky.