Sky watchers have a date with with the annual Geminids meteor shower, the last major meteor shower of the year, this coming Friday night and Saturday morning, the 13th and 14th of December.

Past Geminids displays have treated those under moonless skies to as many as 100 meteors per hour. "Happily," says NASA Solar System Ambassador to Utah Patrick Wiggins, "the best time to watch this year's show is after midnight and by that time the Moon will have set leaving the skies nice and dark."

Geminid meteors are amongst the slowest meteors known so unlike the Perseids meteors of summers past which tend to produce fast, white hot meteors the Geminids are known for their slow, graceful, colorful meteors.

"Many people refer to these lights as shooting stars or falling stars and think they're really much bigger than they really are." says Wiggins. "They're actually tiny specs of rock that burn up and turn to ash when they strike the atmosphere, high above our heads."

The resultant meteor ash then drifts harmlessly to Earth.

Most meteors are thought to have been left behind by comets. The Geminid's parent comet was unknown until 1983 when a NASA satellite discovered a asteroid, now known as 3200 Phaethon, which may be a spent comet and the long lost parent of the Geminids.

Telescopes and binoculars severely restrict the user's view of the sky so they should not be used to watch for meteors.

Wiggins says there's no best place in the sky to look. "Just try to get away from city light pollution and then just lay back and look up and the meteors will call attention to themselves."

A few Geminids may also be visible in the nights leading up to and following the predicted peak, but numbers of meteors on those nights will be far fewer as the Earth will then be less centered in the comet particle swarm.

The three best meteor showers of 2003 are expected to occur in early January, mid-August and mid-December.

For information on the Geminids and other astronomical topics log on to Wiggins' NASA Solar System Ambassador web page at http://planet.state.ut.us.