I KNOW I said last week that the 2018 noctilucent cloud season was over, writes STUART ATKINSON. But it might still be worth keeping an eye on the northern sky after midnight for the next week or so because, amazingly, since you read the last Skywatch there have been three more good displays. We missed them here in Cumbria because we were under the same dirty meringue of cloud that cheated us out of the lunar eclipse, but they were lovely from northern Scotland. So no guarantees that more displays will grace our skies, but keep your eyes open, just in case.

If you've seen a few shooting stars recently it's because the annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak this coming weekend and is already quite active. Last year's Perseid shower was very frustrating: the sky was perfectly clear but a huge, blindingly-bright Full Moon drowned out all but the very brightest shooting stars. This year there's no Moon to get in the way, so we should have a much better view, especially overnight on August 12/13 when the shower is most active.

You'll be able to see some shooting stars from your garden, but if you can get out of town to somewhere dark, with no light pollution and a huge, wide open sky, you'll see lots more. How many will you see? Maybe one every minute or so after midnight on the 12th, but there are always quiet periods during a meteor shower so expect lulls when there's nothing much happening. Most will be quite faint but some will be strikingly bright and lovely colours - red, blue and green - too.

Don't worry about which direction you need to look in, just find yourself somewhere dark, look up, and eventually you'll see a shooting star zip across the sky.