This is the time of year for one of the best annual spectacles of shooting stars. The Perseid meteor shower starts to put on a good show tonight and reaches a climax next Monday or Tuesday night, before dying away by next Thursday.

This is a sight well worth watching for anyone who enjoys late nights. The meteors will be easiest to see when the Moon has set after midnight and the sky is dark. The numbers of meteors will reach a peak of up to 100 per hour just before dawn, around 5.30am. Perseid meteors are particularly good to watch because they tend to be bright. They appear to originate from the constellation of Perseus, hence their name, although the best way to observe them is simply to look straight up at the sky.

However, the one drawback to the Perseid shower this year is the weather. The outlook for stargazing looks grim, with thick clouds over much of the UK tonight. Low pressure is to blame for these gloomy conditions, and it shows no sign of blowing away over the next several days.

The meteors come from a trail of debris left in the wake of the Swift-Tuttle comet. As tiny, dust-sized particles crash through the Earth’s atmosphere at phenomenal speeds, the atmosphere around them is superheated and glows, which from the ground looks like a trail of light, which is why they are called shooting stars. The Perseids were also called the “tears of St Lawrence” after the 3rd-century archdeacon of Rome who was executed by the Romans. Meteors streaked through the sky on the day of his execution and reappeared every year around St Lawrence’s feast day, August 10.