While the Lyrids might not be cosmic celebrities like August's showy Perseids, the April meteor shower has been known to offer up a surprise or two for sky-watchers

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"Although the Lyrids have been observed since 687 B.C., the behavior of the shower from year to year is unpredictable," said Anthony Cook, an astronomer for the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

"An average Lyrid shower produces between 10 and 20 meteors per hour, but occasionally these rates increase to 90 per hour," Cook said. "In 1803 the shower produced about a thousand meteors per hour"—just enough to qualify as a