The annual shower can be seen from Australia between December 13 and December 16. 

It is set to peak in Australia early tomorrow morning between 3 and 3.30am.

At their height, the Geminids could produce between 50 and 100 shooting stars every hour 

They might be glowing in multiple colours and include occasional rapid bursts of two or three.

The meteors have broken off from 3200 Phaethon, an almost five-kilometre-wide object, which is breaking up because it swings close to the sun's surface.

Meteor showers occur when the Earth ploughs through clouds of cometary dust. The tiny particles, some no bigger than a grain of sand, burn up brightly as they enter the atmosphere.

The Geminids are unusual in that they are not shed by a classic icy comet but a body that shares characteristics of both comets and asteroids.

3200 Phaethon was discovered in 1983 by two British scientists examining NASA satellite images and initially classified as an asteroid.

But it has an eccentric orbit that looks more like that of a comet than an asteroid and brings it well inside the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, every 1.4 years.

NASA describes it as a "rock comet".

The Geminid meteor shower itself was first noted in the 1860s.

Over time, it has become more intense, with up to 20 comets per hour reported in the 1920s, rising to 50 in the 1930s, 60 in the 1940s and 80 in the 1970s.