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Gallery: Geminid Meteor Lights Up Skies
Rottingdean Windmill, near Brighton. Pic: Sumitra Sri Sribhashyam
The sky was lit up in different colours. Pic: Mike Williams
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The display in the UK began just after midnight. Pic: Dave Algers
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Another great view of the display, this time over Butser Ancient Farm. Pic: Adrian Jurd
Stargazers have enjoyed a celestial firework display as one of the year's most spectacular meteor showers reached its fiery peak in the UK.
Clear skies ensured good views of the Geminid meteor shower.
Just after midnight, some very bright meteors raced across the sky.
The official Geminid "maximum" is at 11am today, but daylight will prevent them from being seen then.
Meteor showers occur when the Earth ploughs through clouds of cometary dust.
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Gallery: Previous Geminid Displays
A Geminid meteor between peaks of the Seven Sisters rock formation in Nevada, 2010
A meteor shower lights up the sky over the Mexican volcano Popocatepetl near the village San Nicolas de los Ranchos in Mexico, 2004
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The sky above the Seven Sisters rock formation in the Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, 2007
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.
Known as 3200 Phaethon, the three-mile-wide object 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".
Traditionally asteroids are made of rock and comets mostly of ice.
Robin Scagell, vice-president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "It's not as clear-cut as it used to be. A lot of asteroids are quite icy. There are asteroids that look a bit like comets and comets that look a bit like asteroids."
