It doesn't peak until next weekend, but I want to give plenty of warning about the great lion in the sky, coughing up streaks of fire moving at speeds of more than 40 miles per second.

No need to fear these fiery projectiles from the celestial king of the beasts, and no need for that reinforced hardhat or asbestos suit.

Just be ready to watch an annual event, the Leonid meteor shower, one of the nicest meteor showers of the year. If you're in the countryside away from heavy city lighting, you may see more than 20 meteors or "shooting stars" an hour, but there's always a chance you'll see even more.

While this shower isn't as great as the Perseids in August or the Geminids coming up in December, conditions for this year's Leonids are favorable because the skies will be nearly moonless. Last year for the Leonids we had a full moon that washed out much of the shower.

You'll be able to see the Leonid meteor shower most of this coming week, especially in the early morning hours after midnight, but the peak of the shower will be this coming weekend, especially the morning of Nov. 19.

That's when the Earth will be in the maximum debris trail left behind by Comet Temple-Tuttle, which last visited this part of the solar system in 1998. Meteor showers occur when the Earth, in its orbit around the sun, crosses into debris trails left behind by comets.

Every time a comet swings close to the Earth and melts a little, particles are released, mostly the size of dust grains but some a little larger than pebbles.

Meteors in a meteor shower are best seen after midnight, because that's when you're on the side of the rotating Earth that's plowing into the comet debris. It's kind of like driving cross county on a warm summer night. You get more bugs smashed on your front windshield than you do on your rear window. After midnight we're facing the "front windshield" of the traveling Earth.

The trail of debris strikes our atmosphere at speeds from about 20 miles per second to more than 40 miles per second. That kind of speed generates so much air friction that the tiny particles are quickly vaporized. There is just about no way they can reach the Earth.

But you may be wondering — how can particles not much bigger than pebbles cause just bright streaks of light? It's certainly more than just combustion. In fact, most of the light that you see from meteors is caused by the materials traveling as fast or faster than speeding bullets, temporarily ripping apart the atomic structure of the column of air they are traveling through.

Many times it takes a second or two for the atoms and molecules to get their act together once a particle passes. That's why the meteor trail can remain visible a few moments after it completes its unsuccessful journey toward the Earth's surface. Sometimes you'll also see different colors in the meteors, depending on how fast they are coming in and what kind of gases they are coming through.

These meteors are called the Leonids, since they seem to emanate from the constellation Leo the Lion in the eastern sky after midnight. That's because Leo happens to be in the same direction in space where the debris trail and the Earth's atmosphere are colliding. Meteors will spread out from all directions from Leo, the constellation that looks like a backward question mark. That makes Leo the radiant of this meteor shower.

That doesn't mean that you should restrict your meteor hunting to the area around Leo. The meteors can show up anywhere in the sky, but their tails will seem to point back in the direction of Leo.

In fact, the best way to watch for the Leonids is to lie back on a lawn chair after midnight, preferably after 2 or 3 a.m., roll your eyes all around the night sky and see how many meteors you spot in a given hour.

It's a fun group or family activity because you can keep each other awake and have multiple eyes looking in all directions of the celestial dome.

About every 30 years or so, the Leonids are extra active because the debris trail of Temple-Tuttle is freshly replenished after the comet's passage. When this happens the Leonid Meteor shower can turn into a meteor storm, and hundreds of meteors can be seen in an hour.

This last happened in 2001 and isn't expected to happen again until the year 2030. But sometimes meteor shower forecasts can go the way of weather forecasts. You could very well see many, many meteors this coming weekend. Hope for that and clear skies!

By the way, the constellation Leo looks like a backward question mark rising in the east. The bright star you can see just to the upper right of the question mark is actually the planet Saturn. If you get a chance, look at Saturn through even the smallest telescope and you should see at least some of its beautiful ring system.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the book, "Pennsylvania Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com