This weekend, we will see the peak of the Geminids meteor shower. This is one of the best of the year, with an expected peak of 150 meteors every hour. Considering that there will be only one-third of the waning Moon visible, this is a great time to go meteor hunting. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Behind every great meteor shower, there is a great parent body. And none is as peculiar as 3200 Phaethon: an asteroid that acts more like a comet, moves closer to the Sun than any other known, and the only one responsible for a meteor shower (although we might have accidentally added a second one when NASA’s DART mission impacted asteroid Dimorphos).

Initially, it was thought that Phaethon was a dead comet. Comets are mad

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