THIS year's noctilucent cloud season is already shaping up to be something very special. Last Sunday morning one of the best displays for years lit up the northern sky, with beautiful billows and streamers of electric blue light silhouetting the fells. It was still going on as dawn approached.

Early June displays this bright are very unusual, and suggest a truly remarkable (if sleep deprived!) summer lies ahead of us. So, everyone reading this column please, please keep an eye on the northern sky on every clear night through until August; there will be more displays and some of them will be incredible. Just go out around midnight, look north, and if you see strange-looking silvery blue clouds you're seeing NLC!

Stuart Atkinson

Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal