Geminids, the best meteor shower of the year with an extreme number of meteor streaks at 120/hour will take place this weekend and can be observed in Vietnam.

Mr. Nguyen Duc Phuong, from the Vietnam Space Observatory Association said that Geminids is known as the "king" of the meteor showers. It will reach the peak on the night of December 13, the early morning of December 14, with about 120 streaks/hour. Viewers can see some scattered meteors from December 7 through 17.

"The best time to observe meteors is from 1am to 4 am on December 14," Phuong said.

The observers can direct the eyes toward the constellation Gemini - the focal point of the meteor shower, when this constellation is quite high in comparison to the southeast horizon. "This time the bright moonlight may affect the observations, but the Geminids is the large meteor shower with lots of bright meteors so we can still enjoy the interesting, colorful party of meteors,” Phuong added.

Most of the meteor shower originated from comets, but for the Geminids, it is related to a celestial body called 3200 Phaethon, which was discovered in 1982.

Every day there are millions of meteorites falling to Earth on fire. They are too small and fragmented so the naked eyes cannot see them.

People can just observe bright meteors and when there are many meteors appearing in the same area in the sky, known as meteor showers.

Each year, the Earth has the opportunity to observe around 8 big meteor showers. These meteor showers often repeat at the same time from year to year.