TO BE HONEST, it's a bit quiet 'up there' at the moment, writes STUART ATKINSON. There are a few planets in the sky, but only just after sunset (Mars) or in the hours before sunrise (Jupiter and Saturn) so they're not obvious or very easy to see; the first of the major annual meteor showers is still months away; the northern lights won't be doing much again now until September or October; the first display of beautiful blue noctilucent clouds won't grace our midnight northern sky for another month, and even the International Space Station is hiding from us.

Now would be a great time for a brilliant supernova to burst into life in the night sky, outshining the Moon, or for someone to discover a distant comet that will become as bright and as glorious as Hale-Bopp was 23 years ago.

So what can we see? Well, there is one sky event worth looking forward to - a meeting of the Moon and Mars in the evening twilight sky that will look very pretty to the naked eye.

Look to the west after sunset on Tuesday, May 7, and you'll see a very, very slender crescent Moon - a New Moon - emerging from the twilight glow, low in the sky. As the sky darkens you'll see a red star just above the Moon, not particularly striking or bright but obvious to the naked eye. This is the planet Mars, and on Tuesday night will be only a Moon's diameter from the Moon itself. In fact, if you have a pair of binoculars the two should fit into the same field of view.

You won't have long to see this celestial pairing because they'll already be low at twilight and will have set by the time the sky is properly dark, so start looking for them as early as you can.