METEOR SHOWER

The Geminid meteor shower will reach its peak tonight (Dec. 13), and you can watch the annual starry night display live online via NASA's Meteor Watch Facebook page.

Arguably the best meteor shower of the year peaks Monday night.

The November chill is settling in! Gwen Tolbart has your forecast.

Even by Alaska standards, this was a lot of snow. The first major snowstorm of the season dumped over a foot-and-a-half of snow in some parts of Alaska's largest city. (noV. 12)

The Orionid meteor shower is expected to peak early Thursday morning, but could be hard to see due to the brightness of the practically full Hunter's moon.

The Taurid meteor shower is relatively sparse, but may display impressive fireballs.

Try watching from your own backyard!

In late April, skywatchers in the Northern Hemisphere will get a view of the Lyrid meteor shower, the dusty trail of a comet with a centuries-long orbit around the sun.

Spend some time under the stars Sunday to look for a dazzling display of shooting stars. The Geminid meteor shower will peak in one of the most reliable shows of the year, according to WJXT. The peak is expected to generate 120 meteors per hour flying 40 times faster than a speeding bullet. NASA says the best night to see the shower is Dec. 13-14, although fewer may be spotted before and after those dates. Lie flat on your back, put away your cell phone and look straight up to take in as much as you can of the 2020 Geminid meteor shower.

Have you heard of the Leonid meteor shower? It comes around every November, but the chances of seeing it this year are much higher than last year. The shower happens at the same time every year, when Earth’s orbit crosses the orbit of Comet Tempel-Tuttle, according to Space.com. A trail of dust is left behind the comet, and when Earth’s orbit crosses that trail, pieces of the comet fall toward our planet’s surface. Luckily for us, meteors are visible to the naked eye, and the shower will peak overnight Monday into Tuesday (Nov. 16-17) around 3 a.m.

Mars will appear brighter than at any other point during the year on Oct. 13, when it will be closest to Earth. “So, a little over every two years, Mars and Earth are closest together in their orbits and, thus, Mars is at its brightest in our nighttime sky. (© 2012 Michael Orso)Blue moon on HalloweenFor the first time since 2001, trick-or-treaters will get the chance to experience a Halloween full moon. A blue moon, by the most popular definition, according to Gross, is when two full moons appear in a single month. “We will have full moons on Oct. 1 and 31, so that means that we’ll have a blue moon on Halloween,” Gross said.

Penumbral eclipseA penumbral lunar eclipse isn’t as exciting and definitely not as noticeable as a total lunar eclipse. When the moon completely moves through the earth’s shadow it is known a total lunar eclipse. The penumbral lunar eclipse starts at 11:07 p.m. and lasts until 1:52 a.m. Planets galoreThrough the middle of July, the planets will continue to put on a show in the morning sky. The evening star will now rise in the morning joining Jupiter, Saturn and Mars through the month.

Everyone needs something super right now, so mother nature is serving up a dazzling display in the night sky. A meteor shower from Halley’s Comet will peak Tuesday. If you go outside and look up, you’ll see a supermoon, the last one of four we’ll see this year. If you miss the meteor shower on Tuesday because of the bright supermoon, stargazers might have another chance to see the shower just before dawn next Sunday. This year, the Eta Aquariid meteor shower coincides with the supermoon on May 7.

The new decade has arrived, and Mother Nature’s first gift to us all is an amazing meteor shower that will take place this weekend. The Quadrantid meteor shower will be easiest to see during the predawn hours Saturday, but is expected to begin late Friday. The Quadrantid meteor shower, which is known to produce 50-100 meteors, was named for a constellation that exists no more: the Quadrans Muralis. An astronomer by the name of Peter Jenniskens identified the parent body of the shower in 2003 as the asteroid 2003 EHI. EarthSky reported that if the asteroid is indeed the Quadrantid shower’s parent, the meteors come from a rocky body — not an icy comet.

ORLANDO, Fla. – Arguably the best meteor shower of the year peaks at the end of this week. Unlike the “Unicorn" meteor shower in November which didn’t live up to the hype, the Geminids are one of the most reliable meteor showers. Most of the meteor showers witnessed on Earth are comet debris that crosses Earth’s orbit. As with all meteor showers, to get the full effect, stargazers should try and get away from city lights and let their eyes adjust to the darkness for about 15 minutes. Venus and Saturn will appear close to each other in the night sky before sunset Dec. 27-29.

The Alpha Monocerotids are typically quiet, producing just a few meteors per hour, but a handful of times over the past 100 years, the shower produced hundreds of meteors per hour. Meteor showers occur when Earth passes through the debris field left over by an asteroid or comet. Don’t be alarmed, the particles from the debris field are only the size of a grain of sand. Peter Jenniskens, a senior research scientist with SETI and the NASA’s AMES Research Center, has been monitoring the shower. If Earth passes through the dense part of the debris field as it did in the years Jenniskens mentioned in the link above, we could be in for a treat.

A company in Japan wants to make history at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo with man-made meteors. CBSN's Jamie Yuccas has more.