Be sure to keep an eye to the sky Sunday night: The peak of the Leonid meteor shower – an annual mid-November treat – will be visible across the night sky late Sunday night and especially early Monday morning.

The Leonids appear to be coming from the constellation Leo the Lion (hence their name) in the east, but they should be visible all the way across the sky.

One problem: A waning gibbous moon will light up the night sky this year, which could interfere with viewing the meteors. In a dark sky, absent of moonlight, you could see up to 10 to 15 meteors per hour at the typical peak of the shower, according to NASA.

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This shower has been known to produce meteor storms, but no Leonid storm is expected this year, EarthSky said. A meteor storm is defined as having at least 1,000 meteors per hour, NASA said.

Some of the greatest meteor showers ever seen have been the Leonids. Some years, they've been a full-fledged meteor storm: The Leonid meteor storm of 1833 included rates as high as 100,000 meteors per hour, EarthSky said.

Also known as "shooting stars," the meteors are actually leftover comet dust. They're pea- and sand-sized bits of dust and debris left by the Tempel-Tuttle comet, which last crossed Earth's orbit in 1998 and will return again in 2031. The dust and debris ignite when it hits our atmosphere.

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As with most meteor showers, the best time to watch the Leonids is usually between the hours of midnight and dawn, according to EarthSky.

Meteors are visible to the naked eye, so you won't need any special equipment to see them, Space.com said.

"Go outside, find a dark sky, lie flat on your back and look straight up," NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke said, "and be prepared to spend a couple of hours outside."

An early forecast from the National Weather Service for Sunday night shows that skies should be clearest over the southern USA, while clouds may cause problems for viewing the meteor shower in portions of the Northwest, Midwest and Northeast.

© NASA, AFP Earth runs into a trail of comet exhaust every year, and the particles strike Earth's outer atmosphere and burn up as in the Leonid shower in November 2000.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Don't miss Sunday's shooting stars: The Leonid meteor shower will be visible across the night sky