With the glare of moonlight gone so many more stars are visible and the colours stand out nicely as well. Watch for a lot of twinkling stars this month due to unsteady air currents and water vapour in the atmosphere. 

Add in a bit of wind or turbulence and you get a star which flickers and can change colour making people wonder if they are seeing a UFO.

If you could view the stars from outside the atmosphere, like the space station or the Moon, they would not twinkle. Remember the rule – stars twinkle, planets don’t.

Dominating the morning sky at the moment is bright white Venus, or the ‘morning star,’ rising above the Eastern horizon around 3am.  Along with brilliant Jupiter at sunrise they make a magic sight in any telescope throughout May. 

So, what’s the difference between the morning star and the evening star I hear you ask? Nothing, they’re actually the same thing, namely Venus. The distinction between “morning” and “evening” merely refers to the time at which the planet is visible.

Ever wondered how many stars are visible in the night sky. It really depends on the darkness of your skies but on a good night, far away from city lights, you should be able to see about 2,000 stars with the naked eye. Astronomers have calculated that about 6,000 stars should be seen from the darkest locations.

The number of stars in the universe is unbelievably huge. There are trillions of galaxies and each galaxy contains billions of stars.

The latest estimates from astronomers say there are a staggering 300 sextillion stars in the known universe. That is a 3 followed by 23 zeros, or 3 trillion times 100 billion. 

So how far away is the closest star? This is actually a trick question. The closest star to the Earth would be the Sun, at a distance of about 150 million kilometres. The closest star outside our solar system is Proxima Centauri 4 light years from Earth. That is over 38 trillion kilometres.