If you’re willing to bundle up this weekend and head outside you might catch the Leonid meteor shower. The shower is set to peak on Friday morning, just one day before the new moon, making for great viewing conditions.

Though the shower will peak in the early morning hours of Friday, it will also be visible Saturday morning when the moon will be completely dark. However, the Leonids shower isn’t one of the biggest throughout the year. The shower is expected to produce just about 10 meteors an hour or so during the height of the shower. This is still more meteors per hour than expected during the November Orionids later in the month, NASA estimates that those will only produce three meteors an hour.

The Leonids get their name from their apparent point of origin, or the radiant. This means the area in space where the shooting stars appear to be coming from, in this case, that’s the Leo constellation. The meteors are actually coming from the Tempel-Tuttle comet. Once every 33 years, the comet completes an orbit of the sun, and viewers can see an abundant meteor shower. But all the other years, viewers simply see the particles from the trail the comet left behind burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Meteors are the small particles or bits of broken asteroids or comets that burn up after they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, this is what we can see from the ground, the particles burning up and sometimes appearing as different colors. Before they enter the atmosphere, when they’re still out in space, they’re called meteoroids and if they make it all the way down to the surface of the Earth they’re called meteorites, according to NASA.

The best time to view the shower will be in the hours following midnight and it will be visible in most of the United States. For the best chances of viewing the shower, be sure to go somewhere with minimal light pollution. Then lay down on the ground and try to take in as much of the sky as possible, more specifically try to take in the space between the East and the point right above your head. Be sure to bring layers or blankets if you’re in a part of the country where the winter weather has set in. Additionally, check the forecast before you head out to view the shower, if there are any clouds, your view of the meteors will be blocked.

If you don’t see any this year, you’ll have a chance again next year as well as a chance next month to see the Geminids meteor shower, those will happen in just a few weeks.

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