April 21-22
Astronomers have been watching this shower for some 2,600 years. The debris entering Earth's atmosphere comes from comet C/1861 G1, which swings around the sun once every 415 years. The meteors appear to emanate from the constellation Lyra.
Typically, this shower yields up to 20 meteors an hour at its peak, modest to be sure. But when Earth passes through denser portions of the debris trail the comet has left behind, the result is a meteor storm, with up to 90 meteors an hour flitting across the night sky.
