Annual Geminid meteor shower lights up Canadian skies this weekend

The meteor shower is visible Friday night, Saturday night, and early into Sunday morning. The best time to view it is 2 a.m. local time

During the Geminid meteor shower this weekend, meteor-watchers can expect to around 50 meteors per hour from a dark sky location and around 25 per hour from an urban location.Wikipedia

Skywatchers across Canada this weekend will be treated to a display of celestial fireworks as the Geminid meteor shower lights up the night sky. Viewers can expect to see up to 50 streaking meteors per hour radiating from the constellation Gemini. While the best views will be in dark sky locations, urban observers may also be able to see a few meteors each minute.

The fiery trails of a meteor shower are caused by meteoroids, small rocks left behind by a comet or asteroid, being incinerated in the Earth’s atmosphere. This weekend, the Earth will enter a cloud of debris left by a passing asteroid orbiting the sun. Rocky material will slam into the Earth’s atmosphere at 130,000 km per hour, leaving colourful streaks of light in its wake as it burns up.

The meteor shower is visible Friday night, Saturday night, and early into Sunday morning. The best time to view the phenomenon is 2 a.m. local time, when the Gemini constellation is directly overhead. The Canadian Space Agency recommends giving your eyes 15-20 minutes to adjust to the dark skies and avoiding bright lights while meteor-gazing, which will ruin your “night vision.” And given the cold weather forecast for parts of Canada this weekend, you may want to dress warmly.

Simulation of this weekend’s night sky featuring the constellation Gemini alongside the Moon and other constellations, in blue. The meteors will appear to radiate outward from Gemini across the night sky, indicated by the yellow arrows. Chris Vaughan/Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Toronto Centre

Your ability to experience this heavenly light show will depend on local weather, cloud cover, and the amount of light pollution in your area. Hurting this year’s chances of a good show is the presence of the Moon, close to Gemini. Though not full, the Moon may still outshine the fainter meteor streaks.

Still, skywatchers should be able to see around 50 meteors per hour in a dark location and around 25 meteors per hour in an urban area. That means residents of Toronto might expect to see a meteor streak every few minutes if the weather cooperates, said Ilana MacDonald of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto.

The Geminid meteor shower is so named because its meteors appear to streak outward in the night sky from the constellation Gemini. Meteor-hunters should wait until darkness has set and for the Gemini to rise in the eastern sky. Gemini is identifiable by its bright namesake stars, Pollux and Castor — the twins.

Those astronomers having trouble finding Gemini can look for Orion the Hunter, with its famous, bright belt of three stars. Look for two bright stars above and below the belt, Betelgeuse and Rigel, then draw a line between the two. This line will point east toward Gemini.


Meteors are visible year round, since space rocks continuously enter and burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. But when the Earth enters the debris field left behind by a comet or asteroid, a true meteor shower results.

MacDonald has an easy, if unorthodox, way to explain the phenomenon. “Say your cat is shedding, is walking around, and leaves a trail of cat hairs behind. If you walk through the trail of cat hairs, you’d see a higher amount of hairs.”

In this space feline scenario, the cat hairs are space debris — small rocks and space dust — and you are the Earth entering the debris field. The cat is the comet or asteroid.

The friction from Earth’s atmosphere hitting the fast-moving debris burns it up, MacDonald explained. “You’re seeing a flash of light and trail as this very hot object is getting incinerated by the earth’s atmosphere. “

You view the debris behind this weekend’s meteor shower relative to Earth in this colourful visualization.

While the debris causing meteor showers usually is left behind by a passing comet, the rocky material responsible for the Geminids actually come from an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon. Just five kilometers wide, the asteroid travels in an elliptical — stretched oval — orbit that brings it near the Sun every 1.43 years. This unusual blue-coloured object was once believed to be a comet, but in 1983 astronomers determined it was, in fact, an asteroid.

Meteors occur when a piece of debris, such as a small rock, left by a passing comet or asteroid burns up in the Earth’s atmosphere, leaving a fiery streak in its wake. Wikipedia

The asteroid, though nearing its closest pass to Earth this month, is still quite far away. This weekend, 3200 Phaethon is approximately 240 million kilometers away, or roughly 41,400 times the distance between Vancouver and Halifax … or 624 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. In December 2017, the strange object made its closest approach to Earth, when it was just 10.3 million kilometers away, but still almost 27 times further than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. You can track the current distance of 3200 Phaethon from Earth here.

Both the meteor shower and the asteroid behind it draw their names from Greek and Roman mythology. “Gemini” is Latin for “twins,” referencing its two bright stars Pollux and Castor, the twin children of the Queen of Sparta. Phaethon in Greek mythology is the son of Helios, the sun god.

However, meteor showers also have significance for Indigenous peoples in Canada. Hilding Neilson, Assistant Professor at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and a member of Qalibu First Nation, explained that meteor showers are part of Indigenous science, culture, and stories.

“A number of nations have stories about Feather-Woman, who gets married and goes into the sky with the Moon,” Neilson said. “When she comes back to earth, she appears as a falling star.”

Meteor showers or falling stars also have significance for the Anishinaabe civilization, said Neilson. “The Anishinaabe have a story about the falling stars that they associate with the wolverine. It’s actually associated with a crater in Northern Quebec.”

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