CHICAGO (AP) –  Good news for stargazers: An astronomer at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium says conditions will be great for watching the Lyrid meteor shower Saturday night.

Astronomer Mark Hammergren says the shower will be in sharper relief this year because it’s occurring during a new moon, making for very dark skies.

Between midnight and dawn Sunday will be the best time to see the annual spray of meteoroids from the tail of the Comet Thatcher.

The Chicago Tribune reports (http://trib.in/HVsj76 ) that people looking to the northeast could see 10 to 20 meteors an hour. They will streak across the sky from the constellation Lyra and move straight overhead closer to sunrise.

In some years, the Lyrids have produced bursts of up to 100 visible streaks per hour.

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