The nights won't get truly dark again now until August, which makes it quite hard to do astronomy. Only the brightest stars and planets are easily visible through the night - unless you can get to a dark sky location out of town, then you will see fainter stars and the Milky Way too. So what do stargazers look at instead?

At the moment Mars and Saturn are shining close together in the sky, low in the south after midnight. Mars really does look like a bright orange 'star' to the naked eye.

But between now and the end of July you should be keeping an eye on the northern sky around and after midnight, in case a display of 'NLC' appears. NLC stands for noctilucent clouds, icy clouds which only form very high up in the atmosphere during the summer months. Because they are so high they are lit by the Sun long after its dark down here on the ground, and shine a beautiful silvery-blue colour.

Unlike the northern lights we can't predict displays of the NLC, so if you want to see them you have to go out and look out for them on every clear night. Most displays are modest affairs, just a few streaks and curls of glowing cloud, but a big display can fill the northern sky with beautiful whirls, streamers and streaks of electric blue.

Stuart Atkinson

Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal