2 Meteor Showers Over Albany In December

ALBANY, CA — As November ends, look ahead to December and the best meteor shower of the year. You were thinking that honor goes to the Perseid meteor shower in August? Well, the Perseids are great, and it helps that the weather is warm during the peak. But the Geminid meteor shower, which runs Dec. 7-17 every year, is something special, producing up to 120 multicolored meteors at their Dec. 13-14 peak.

Produced by debris left behind by the asteroid 3200 Phaethon, this shower is best viewed after midnight. A nearly new moon will make for excellent viewing conditions. The meteors radiate from the constellation Gemini but are visible anywhere in the sky.

The Ursids, a minor meteor shower, runs Dec. 17-25 and produces around five to 10 meteors at the peak. Viewing conditions are best after midnight. The first-quarter moon sets just after midnight, so dark skies will enhance meteor viewing. The meteors come from the constellation Ursa Minor but can be seen anywhere in the sky.

The Ursids' peak is timed this year with the winter solstice on Dec. 21. The winter solstice occurs when Earth's sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn. It's the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

A rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn also occurs on the first day of winter. The two planets appear perfectly aligned, something that hasn’t happened since 2000. They will be so close to one another that they'll appear as one bright planet. To see it, look at the western sky just after sunset. EarthSky calls it "the closest Jupiter-Saturn conjunction since 1623, only 14 years after Galileo made his first telescope."

The last full moon of the year is on Dec. 30. Native Americans called it the full cold moon for reasons that are obvious, but it’s also been called the moon before yule and the full long nights moon.

Read more about the Geminid meteor shower.

— Written by Beth Dalbey with additional reporting by Bea Karnes