The last big meteor shower of the year takes place Saturday night. The Geminid Meteor Shower is a late autumn favorite. Meteors are fast moving pieces of space debris that burn up as they enter the earth’s atmosphere. What you’ll see looks like shooting stars. Most of the meteors appear to come from the zodiacal constellation Gemini, for which the shower is named.

The best time to look is well before midnight, before the last quarter moon rises in the east. The moon is in between the zodiacal constellations Leo and Virgo. You can see meteors throughout the night, possibly some early meteors tonight and late meteors on Sunday night.

In the evening, look to the east where Gemini is rising. Meteors can be seen in any part of the sky.

The Geminid shower is linked to an asteroid called 3200 Phaethon, that is caught in an extreme elliptical orbit around the sun. The asteroid behaves like a comet, but lacks the ice to create the tail.

The Peterson Field Guide, Stars and Planets, indicates you may see as many as 70 meteors in an hour. That is not likely here. If you see a meteor every couple of minutes, you are seeing more than most observers.

There is one more meteor shower later this month. The Ursid Meteor Shower takes place on the evening of Dec. 22. It is a small shower. The guide reports that you might see 15 meteors in an hour.