Dec. 13, 2013: As arctic air and record cold sweeps across the USA, amateur astronomers are looking at their calendars with a degree of trepidation. A date is circled: Dec. 14th. And below it says: "Wake up at 4 AM for the Geminid meteor shower."
"It's going to be cold," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "But that is the best time to see the 2013 Geminid meteor shower."
Geminids appear every year in mid-December when Earth passed through a stream of
debris from "rock
comet" 3200 Phaethon. Typically more than 100 meteors per hour stream out
of the radiant in the constellation Gemini.when the shower peaks on Dec. 13th
and 14th.
There is a problem, however. This year a nearly full Moon will
reduce the number of visible meteors 2 to 3 fold. Most of the shower's peak
will suffer from lunar glare. Most, but not all.