IF THE sky is clear after dark on August 16 or 17th, get out into the countryside, find somewhere dark, and look straight up. If you’re somewhere well away from light pollution you will see a broad, misty band cutting the sky in half, stretching from the north-east to the south-west.

This is the famous Milky Way, and if you sweep along it with binoculars you'll see countless hundreds of thousands of tiny stars. In some places they're packed together so closely they're like salt spilled on a black cloth.

This starry trail is our own Galaxy seen from within. Because Earth orbits a star embedded inside its disc, we can't see its true shape, which is a shame. If Earth had formed high above or far below its disc we would see a beautiful catherine wheel of stars painted across the summer sky.

On the 16th and 17th the almost Full Moon will be shining in front of the Milky Way's centre, where astronomers have found an enormous black hole which eats stars. So look to the Moon on those nights and imagine the cosmic violence happening far, far behind it...

Stuart Atkinson

Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal.