Mother Nature adds to the holiday lights this week for the pick of the Geminid meteor shower.

Our Kristi Dutton speaks to an expert with an eye to the sky to tell us more about the early Christmas gift for stargazers.

The stars are aligning, so to speak, this week with a beautiful view of the Geminid meteor shower.

Joining us now is Shane Holland, a meteorologist with the Kentucky Maisonette.

So, Shane, we don't want to leave people out in the cold with this spectacular event, but that's where they're going to want to be, especially tonight to see it.

So what exactly causes the Geminid meteor shower?

So the Geminids meteors actually originate from the constellation Gemini, which this time of year is located in the northeastern sky.

However, I think the best place to actually see a shooting star streak across the sky would be if you look straight up rather than look at the northeastern sky.

And if you live in the metro areas of, say, Louisville or Lexington, where there's a lot of light pollution, the best viewing is going to be away from the city.

So you might want to venture out just a few miles.

Okay.

So get out of the city.

Get away from those city lights.

And this year and this week, we had some pretty good conditions weather wise for viewing these meteors.

Right.

What is that?

You could not ask for much better viewing than what we're going to have tonight and what we had last night.

And this is actually a29p of this event and we're talking at least 60 meters per hour.

And upwards of a hundred meteors per hour.

If conditions are right, that's what you might see later on tonight.

We have a night where we are in the time of the year where daylight is at its shortest.

So that's favorable.

We also have a nearly new moon, so it will not be very bright.

So that's favorable.

And we have mainly clear skies expected tonight.

So that's a nice trifecta, if you like to see a meteor shower.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Well, we will make sure not to miss this celestial spectacular show for tonight.

Thank you so much, Jane.

Appreciate it, Christy.

Any time.