If astronomers are correct, a new set of shooting stars may light up the sky late the night of May 23, into the early morning May 24.

The anticipated celestrial display would be the Camelopardalids meteor shower caused by particles, likely dust, left in the wake of the comet 209P/LINEAR, which streaked this way an estimated 100-plus years ago, according to NASA researchers.

The fact is, no one has ever seen evidence of the Camelopardalids before, but the light show that could happen Friday night and Saturday morning could rival the well-known Perseids that appear every August.

Some astronomers believe the stream will yield more than 200 meteors per hour, according to NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, which operates a nationwide network of automated fireball observatories that capture anything that blazes through the Earth's atmosphere.

Comet 209P/LINEAR -- a relatively dim comet that swoops inside Earth's orbit every five years as it journeys around the sun -- was first detected in February 2004 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project, cooperative program between NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory and the United States Air Force.

Meteor experts Esko Lyytinen, of Finland, and Peter Jenniskens, from NASA's Ames Research Center, predicted Earth would cross paths with Comet 209P/LINEAR's debris field this year, on May 24.

Streams of dust likely ejected by the comet back in the 1800s would hit the planet's atmosphere, resulting in a potentially-spectacular outburst of meteors.

There was broad consensus among other forecasters that Earth would cross through the comet's lingering stream, although not as many are convinced an array of meteors will be there to greet us.

The extent of the nighttime light show will hinge on exactly how active the comet was more a century ago when the debris streams were left.

The best time to look for the Camelopardalis will be between 6:00 and 08:00 Universal Time, or between 2 and 4 a.m. EDT on May 24.

The meteors are expected to radiate from a point in Camelopardalis, also known as "the giraffe," a faint constellation near the North Star, a NASA release explained

Then again, because it's a new meteor shower nobody's ever experienced before, surprises are certainly possible.

That means large bursts of meteors could occur hours before or after the forecast peak. Or, of course, there might be nothing to see at all.