The first of August's two eclipses occurs tomorrow morning

The first occurs as early as tomorrow morning, when the Moon takes a bite out of the northern part of the Sun in a partial solar eclipse as seen from Europe. It is vital to stress that we must never look directly at the Sun through binoculars or any telescope. To do so, even for an instant, is to risk permanent damage to our eyes, if not blindness.

Instead project a small image of the Sun's disk on to a white card, using a pinhole in another card or one half of a small pair of binoculars.

Watchers in Edinburgh see the Moon begin to encroach on the upper edge of the Sun's disk at 09:24 BST and by maximum eclipse at 10:16 it covers 35 per cent, about one third, of the Sun's diameter. The eclipse ends at 11:11 as the last sliver of the Moon leaves the left edge of the Sun. If you are further north than Edinburgh, the eclipse lasts slightly longer and more of the Sun is hidden. From Lerwick in Shetland, for example, the eclipse lasts from 09:24 until 11:21 and up to 47 per cent of the Sun's diameter is obscured. On the other hand, from London it lasts from 09:33 until 11:05 with a maximum obscuration of only 22 per cent.

A total eclipse of the Sun is visible along a ribbon of the Earth's surface that stretches from northern Canada, across northern Greenland and the high Arctic to Novaya Zemlya before diving through Russian and Mongolia to China. Weather permitting, the best view might be had from northern Russia, where the dazzling disk of the Sun, the photosphere, is covered for 147 seconds.

A partial eclipse of the Moon is already under way by the time the Sun sets and the Moon rises on the evening of 16 August. The event begins at 19:25, when the eastern edge of the Moon touches the Earth's penumbra, the outer fringe of the Earth's shadow. The umbra, the darker core of the shadow, begins to cover the Moon at 20:36, just as the Moon rises as seen from Edinburgh. From then until 23:44 at least part of the Moon will be inside the umbra, with the latter covering all but the northern 19 per cent of the Moon's disk at mid-eclipse at 22:10. By then the Moon stands low in our south-eastern sky, between the constellations of Aquarius and Capricornus. Although no direct sunlight penetrates into the umbra, some stray light always makes it around the Earth's edge, so it is interesting to look for coloured effects, perhaps greens or reds, on the Moon's eclipsed surface. Between 23:44 and 00:55, the Moon slowly retreats from the penumbra and resumes its normal brilliance.

A handful of swift Perseids meteors have been flashing through our sky for more than a week now, but nothing like as many as we should see near the shower's maximum on 12 August. Average rates of some 80-100 meteors an hour might be spotted under ideal skies at the peak. Sadly, this occurs during our daylight on the 12th, although rates should still be very respectable on the nights around that time.

As their name suggests, the Perseids diverge from a radiant point in Perseus that lies below the W-shaped constellation of Cassiopeia and climbs through our north-eastern sky overnight to approach the zenith before dawn. Note, though, that the meteors, many leaving glowing trails in their wake, flash in all parts of the sky. The morning hours, after the Moon sets and with the radiant highest in the sky, are likely to be best and there is even a chance that a sharp secondary burst of meteors could make the pre-dawn hours on the 12th particularly interesting.

As the Sun continues southwards, sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh change from 05:18/21:19 BST on the 1st to 06:16/20:09 on the 31st. Nautical twilight, the interval between daylight and effective darkness at dusk and dawn, shrinks in duration from 120 to 89 minutes during August. Following new moon during tomorrow's eclipse, the Moon reaches first quarter on the 8th, is new during the partial lunar eclipse on the 16th, at last quarter on the 24th and new again on the 30th.

Jupiter blazes low in the south at our star map times as the Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb and Altair looms high on the meridian and the much less conspicuous Square of Pegasus climbs in the east. Now that the nights are darker, the Milky Way is more noticeable, though perhaps not from urban areas, where street lighting and the growing blight of domestic security, garden and ornamental lighting swamps the fainter celestial sights overhead. At the map times, the Milky Way flows past Deneb in Cygnus as it arches overhead from the south-south-west to the north-north-east.

Dimming slightly from magnitude -2.7 to -2.5, Jupiter is still more than twice as bright as Sirius as it creeps westwards in Sagittarius. Look for it near the Moon on the nights of the 11th and 12th as you watch for those Perseids. The planet sets in the south-west about three hours after our map times.

The other naked-eye planets are poorly placed. Mars and Saturn set too soon after the Sun to be glimpsed in the western evening twilight. Venus is brilliant at magnitude -3.9 but stands less than 5 high in the west at sunset so will be hard to see. Mercury is magnitude -0.3 when it is 1 below Venus on the 20th but I doubt whether anyone will spot it from Scotland.