Sky-watchers are getting ready for a meteor shower from a celestial lion: The Leonids peak this weekend.

While this year's performance is expected to be dampened somewhat by the partially illuminated moon, there will still be a pretty sky show. Shooting stars will light the sky every few minutes at peak time, from late night Sunday, November 16, into the following pre-dawn hours.

Like their namesake, the Leonids are known to be quite temperamental. They have been known on rare occasions—every 33 years or so—to flare up into bona fide meteor storms, with hourly rates as high as a few hundred meteors.

During the last big storm in 2002, over 3,000 meteors fell per hour. But the granddaddy—and the root of the Leonids