A FANTASTIC display of shooting stars will light up the night sky as the Geminid meteor show makes its annual appearance this weekend.

NASA teased stargazers around the world with a stunning photo from the 2013 spectacle, complete with Jupiter and the Orion Nebula in shot.

This year’s event lasts until Tuesday and will hit its peak tonight and tomorrow morning.

Bright white meteors are expected to be especially visible around 2am, when the Gemini constellation they appear to originate from is highest in the sky.

But the annual celestial event will have to contend with a bright waxing gibbous moon in the sky, astronomers warn.

The shower normally provides about 50 shooting stars an hour, almost one a minute, at its peak, but the brightness of the moon may hide some this year.

“Instead of seeing 60 or more Geminids per hour one may still be able to count roughly 20 per hour,” the Meteor Society said.

Geminids are a staple of the astronomers’ calendar and occur mid-December without fail.

They originate from a passing mysterious crumbly “rock comet” called 3200 Phaethon. Debris from the passing rock scatters in space and Earth ploughs through the clouds several times throughout December.