Awe-Inspiring Geminid Meteor Shower to Swamp Earth Before Christmas—What You Need to Know

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They seem to shoot from the constellation of the twins Gemini, but the bold, bright, white shards of light that crop up like clockwork in the night sky in the lead-up to Christmas really originate much closer to home. Seeming to radiate from Gemini’s bright star Castor as it rises in the early evening, just before 9 p.m. your local time, a darting spectacle of lights appears. It’s an intense meteor shower.

Here’s what you need to know to enjoy this famously spectacular and prolific seasonal meteor shower—certainly one of the year’s best!

The Meteor Shower’s Radiant

Bright star Castor actually lies 51 light years away. And while these shooting stars seem to emanate from that faraway star, they don’t actually. Meteors are bits of cosmic debris littering space colliding with Earth’s upper atmosphere and burning up in our sky a mere 60 miles overhead. This particular shower is dubbed the Geminids, after the constellation Gemini where they seem to shoot from.