moon
The Slooh Community Observatory will hold a live stream of the December full moon Getty

On the evening of 6 December, the Gemini full moon will rise in a spectacular display.

Otherwise known as the December full moon, the Cold Moon, the Moon Before Yule or Long Night Moon, it will reach its peak at 12.27 UTC when the moon will be positioned directly opposite Earth.

The Slooh Community Telescope will broadcast the full moonrise live as it lifts off from Sedona in Arizona, in the United States.

It is the first in a new series of live programmes launching for 2015, where Slooh will cover interesting celestial phenomenon from exotic locations on Earth.

You can watch the moonrise live online here.

The Gemini full moon is set to coincide with another spectacular astronomical event, as the Geminid meteor shower will begin on Sunday 7 December.

The night sky will be lit up by up to 100 shooting stars per hour for 10 days, with the peak of the shower occurring around the 13 and 14 December.

One of the brightest displays of the year, the Geminids should be more impressive than the Leonid meteor shower in November, which yielded just 15 meteors per hour in peak conditions.

"The Geminids are typically one of the best and most reliable of the annual meteor showers," Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.

According to Nasa, the meteors will be travelling at a rate of 22 miles per second. This is relatively slow for the usual speed of a meteor, as the Geminids – along with the Quadrantids – are the only meteor showers that do not originate from a comet.

The Geminids are caused by the object 3200 Phaethon, thought to be a Palladian asteroid, which is a B-type asteroid with an extremely high inclination in the intermediate asteroid belt.

"The Geminids are different to other meteor showers as Geminid meteors originate from an asteroid, as opposed to a comet, meaning they are very rocky and gritty, making them slightly easier to see than other showers," a spokesperson from the Met Office said in a statement.

You can find out where to get the best view of the Geminid meteor shower here.

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