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.

My favourite deep space image is that of the M42 Nebula in Orion. Purely for aesthetic reasons, as this cloud of gas where new stars are being born, has formed itself into the shape of a horses head! M42 is probably one of the most photographed regions of space, not only because of the Horses Head, but the whole cloud of stellar gas is illuminated in beautiful red and purple colours.

One good thing about winter approaching in the UK, is that Orion becomes dominant in the night sky. Finding it is easy – you don’t need to know where it is! Just gaze up on a clear night and look for 3 bright stars slanted in a row. There aren’t any other stars in the sky that resemble this feature.

The three stars are the belt of Orion the Hunter. Framing the belt are two bright stars above; Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, while below the belt are another two bright stars; Saiph and Rigel. Take a look at the pictures above and below. You will have seen this shape in the sky before, now you know that  it’s Orion.