Best Meteor Shower of 2009 Peaks Tonight

This year’s annual Geminid meteor shower is expected to be a doozie, producing up to 140 “shooting stars” per hour. The event, which NASA has labeled the best meteor shower of 2009, has been ramping up the past few days but gets serious tonight. Maximum activity is expected early Monday – around 12:10 a.m. EST. But the peak of this event encompasses several hours, astronomers say. So good viewing can be had from around 9 p.m. local time tonight through dawn Monday. The best time? “Watch the sky during the hours around local midnight,” advises NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke. The shower will be visible to anyone in the Northern Hemisphere, weather permitting. People in suburbs and cities, where lights are bright, will not see fainter meteors and so will experience lower numbers.