See the link below for info on the origins of this meteor shower.
http://www.space.com/18836-geminid-meteor-shower-origins.html
by Elizabeth Howell, SPACE.com Contributor
Date: 10 December 2012
Stargazers are about to get their annual celestial treat: A bright meteor shower, the Geminids, will grace skies worldwide this week, with a peak in activity on Thursday (Dec. 13).
No telescope or binoculars are required to see the show — just use your bare eyes. The moon will set before the meteors come out to play around 10 p.m. local time, meaning the sky should be nice and dark for optimal viewing. There could be as many as 100 to 150 meteors an hour to gape at, for those patient enough to spend a few hours in a dark area and let their eyes adapt to starlight.
The Geminids, unusually among meteor showers, are the leftovers of an asteroid (most showers originate with comets). They are caused when rubble from the asteroid hits Earth's atmosphere, lighting a path through the sky as it burns up.
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The term "meteoroid" refers to rocks in space that have not entered Earth's atmosphere. When they hit the atmosphere in a blaze of light, they're referred to as "meteors," then "meteorites" if they reach the ground.
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"That's an illusion. It's very rare, exceedingly rare, for a meteorite to land near an individual, and the Geminids won't produce meteorites. They will not make it to the ground. People don't have to worry about getting hit by falling Geminids."
http://www.space.com/18814-geminid-meteor-shower-viewing-tips.html
----- What potentially will be the best meteor display of the year is just around the corner, scheduled to reach its peak on Thursday night, Dec. 13: the Geminid Meteors.
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this year, the moon will be at new phase on Dec.13, meaning no moon will be visible. This means that the sky will be dark and moonless all through the Geminid's peak night, making for perfect viewing conditions for the shower.
According to Margaret Campbell-Brown and Peter Brown in the Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the Geminids are predicted to reach peak activity at 8 p.m. EST Dec. 13 (00:00 UT on Dec. 14). That means those in Europe and North Africa east to central Russia and China are in the best position to catch the very crest of the shower, when the rates conceivably could exceed 120 meteors per hour!
However, maximum rates persist at only marginally reduced levels for some 6 to 10 hours around the biggest ones, so other locations (such as North America) should enjoy some very fine Geminid activity as well. Indeed, under normal conditions on the night of maximum activity, with ideal dark-sky conditions, at least 60 to 120 Geminid meteors can be expected to burst across the sky every hour on average (light pollution greatly cuts the numbers of visible meteors down significantly).
Viewing tips
Generally speaking, depending on your location, the constellation Gemini begins to come up above the east-northeast horizon right around the time evening twilight is coming to an end. So you might catch sight of a few early Geminids as soon as the sky gets dark. There is a fair chance of perhaps catching sight of some "Earth-grazing" meteors. Earthgrazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from a point near to even just below the horizon. Such meteors are distinctive because they follow long paths nearly parallel to our atmosphere.
The Geminids will begin to appear noticeably more numerous in the hours after 10 p.m. local time, because the shower's radiant is already fairly high in the eastern sky by then. The best views, however, come around 2 a.m., when their radiant point will be passing very nearly overhead. The higher a shower's radiant, the more meteors it produces all over the sky.
But keep this in mind: at this time of year, meteor watching can be a long, cold business. You wait and you wait for meteors to appear. When they don't appear right away, and if you're cold and uncomfortable, you're not going to be looking for meteors for very long!
The late Henry Neely, who for many years served as a lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium, once had this to say about watching for the Geminids: "Take the advice of a man whose teeth have chattered on many a winter's night — wrap up much more warmly than you think is necessary."
Hot cocoa or coffee can take the edge off the chill, as well as provide a slight stimulus. It's even better if you can observe with friends. That way, you can keep each other awake, as well as cover more sky. Give your eyes time to dark-adapt before starting.
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