It’s neither the most famous nor the most spectacular meteor shower, but the Lyrids meteor shower, which peak before dawn tomorrow, have some good stuff going for them. “You’re right: The Lyrids aren’t the biggest one out there, but this year they have the advantage of occurring around the time of the new moon,” said said Rich Talcott, senior editor of Astronomy magazine. “That makes conditions among the best for a meteor shower. It’s probably the best conditions we’ll have for a meteor shower for several months.” The best known meteor shower is the Perseids, which peaks in mid-August and can produce 80 meteors per hour; the Quadrantid shower, which peaks in early January, produces 40 to 100 per hour. By comparison, the Lyrids produce 10 to 20 per hour. Still, the shower has some interesting aspects. It is, for example, the first meteor shower ever recorded: The Chinese, who were always describing celestial events, wrote about the Lyrids in 687 BC. And Lyrid meteors are relatively bright and fast: 108,000 mph. Meteor showers occur when the Earth rolls through trails of dust particles left by comets, and the particles burn up in the atmosphere. Lyrid meteors come from the dust trail left by Comet Thatcher, discovered by amateur astronomer A.E. Thatcher of New York on April 5, 1861, seven days before the Confederate army bombarded Fort Sumter to begin the Civil War. Comet Thatcher is a periodic comet, which means it approaches the inner solar system on a regular basis. But it’s also a long-period comet: Its orbit is 415 years, so next time it’s visible from Earth will be 2276, as people are gearing up to celebrate the Quincentennial of the United States. Some years, when the Earth passes through a thick part of Comet Thatcher’s tail, the shower can be up to 100 meteors an hour, but, Talcott said, this probably won’t be one of those years. If 10 to 20 bright, fast meteors aren’t enough to get a person out of bed early in the morning, Carole Holmberg, planetarium director of the Calusa Nature Center and Planetarium, has another reason. “It’s not just the meteor shower,” she said. “Venus and the crescent moon will be particularly close in the east. It’s supposed to be a beautiful morning. The Lyrids are a bonus.”