There’s a good chance that if you wake up before dawn this week and look up at the sky, you’ll be able to see a few bright comets speeding through the vastness of space.

The Orionid meteor shower is predicted for this coming week until Oct. 25, with its peak expected on Oct. 21. Similar to the Eta Aquarid meteor shower in late spring, it happens when the Earth passes through the dust left over by Halley’s Comet. The tiny particles of methane and water vapor left over from the comet’s path burn up in Earth’s atmosphere and produce “shooting stars.”

The showers are termed the “Orionids” because they appear just north of Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. They were first noted almost two thousand years ago, and have been regularly monitored for the past 150 years. Halley’s Comet last passed Earth in 1986, but this year’s show is predicted to be a good one if the weather holds up: the moon has waned to a narrow crescent, allowing for dark skies where the meteor shower is easily observable.

Unfortunately, the meteor shower is at a low point in its 12-year activity cycle. Viewers could catch 70 meteors per hour from 2006-2009, but this week the shower is unlikely to provide more than one meteor every four minutes.

The Orionids will be best viewed high in the east from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., at an angle of at least 45 degrees. The meteors are fast, hitting the atmosphere at 41 miles per second, and tend to only show a faint glimmer that doesn’t last particularly long.

For those unable to watch the meteor shower outside, NASA will be hosting a webcast beginning on Oct. 20 showing views of the shower from Alabama’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The website Space.com will hold a similar webcast for additional views of the phenomenon.