When looking at the night sky it’s always best to get to the darkest place possible, away from street lights and other light pollution. Your eyes also need to adapt to the darkness, and this takes 10 to 20 minutes.

Pitch black surroundings are best, so you will need a small torch with you to see more earthly things.  Cover the torch up with some red cellophane, and this will keep your eyes in the correct night vision mode. (This is the same principal that traditional photographers use in their ‘Dark Room’).  

Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are all visible this month, but none of them are at their best, so I always concentrate on Galaxy spotting in May. First we need to find our night sky friend, the Plough constellation (’Big Dipper’ in the USA).

The Plough is the easiest constellation to find, but this month it seems to be hiding? That’s because in May it’s right above your head!….Crane your neck back, and there it is, directly overhead. Looking at the Plough through binoculars or a telescope, you can peer outside the Milky Way at four of our Galaxy neighbours; M51, M81, M82 and M101.

After 9pm during the first week of April look low down to the West and you will see Venus and Mercury very close together. Given a clear sky the best view will be on Sunday 4th April.

Venus climbs higher and higher throughout April, and will be easy to spot. It’s the brightest object in the sky apart from the Moon. 

If you have binoculars take a look at Cancer on Saturday 17th April. Mars passes nearby M44 the “Beehive Cluster”, that will be a great sight in close-up.

For planet hunters Venus is easy to spot, It’s the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. Just look towards the south west after sunset and the most prominent star you can see is not a star at all, It’s our nearest planetary neighbour, Venus.

Higher in the sky, dominating the constellation of Cancer is a bright star with a red hue. You are looking at the next nearest planet to us, Mars. Known in the past as the God of War due to it’s connotations with blood. Mars is larger than Venus, but it is further away from the Sun, and is not therefore quite as bright as Venus.

Between Sunday 14th and Wednesday 17th February at 5.30pm look to the South West. Low down just peeping over the horizon you will see Venus, and just above it Jupiter.

There will be no other stars around as they are not bright enough to pierce the light pollution. So if you do see two bright ’stars’ low down, you know that they can only be the planets Venus and Jupiter.

Hopefully Tuesday 16th February will be a clear night because at 5.30pm you can see Venus, Jupiter and the Crescent Moon above – a really wonderful sight.

Orion still dominates the southern night sky and is one of the easiest constellations to spot. Just look for 3 stars in a row – that’s Orion the Hunters belt. These 3 stars are good pointers for finding other constellations.

If you follow the line to the right you’ll reach Taurus the Bull and the Hyades Cluster.

Carry on beyond the Hyades and you’ll find the Pleiades (or ‘Seven Sisters’). This is a tight grouping of seven stars, but if you look through binoculars or a telescope you will actually see hundreds of stars.

I saw a shooting star tonight, which always cheers me up. I have seen more shooting stars than most people, because whenever it’s a clear night sky I’m always looking up, usually trying to pick out my favourite constellations. Seeing shooting stars is a byproduct of that, (along with a cricked neck)!

What are Shooting Stars? Well, the first thing that they ARE NOT is Stars! Stars are huge nuclear fusion furnaces like our Sun. Shooting Stars are normally just bits of dust entering our atmosphere.

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.” Douglas Adams, the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

We all know the universe is big, the trouble is the human mind is not designed to appreciate the huge numbers involved. It’s why millions of people pay money to the National Lottery, despite the odds of winning a jackpot being 14 million to 1.

There are two full moons this month. The first on Wednesday 2nd December and the second on New Years Eve. Normally there is only one full moon each calender month, but every two to three years, a second full moon occurs.

This is commonly known as a “blue moon” because of its rarity. On New Years Eve the moon won’t be blue, but it may have an orange or pink colour. This is due to a partial eclipse occurring between 6.52pm and 7.54pm. Light scattering through Earth’s shadow during this time will colour the affected region of the moon.

Venus is still a bright morning star, but now rising only shortly before the sun. Mars shines out in the constellation Cancer in the eastern night sky. Jupiter is now very much an evening object, in Capricornus, low down in the south-west as seen from the Northern Hemisphere.

Saturn is in the eastern morning sky, further out from the sun than Venus. It is in the right-hand part of the constellation Virgo as seen from the UK.  It is brighter than the stars of the region, but not yet as bright as Spica, the main star of Virgo.