MARS has featured in many science fiction films, but usually very inaccurately. The Martian got it just about right though, and showed Mars as it really is. If you want to see the real thing, we're almost at the best time in the whole year to see Mars in the night sky.

Mars is rising in the east at around 11.30pm at the moment, but it's best to wait until around midnight to look for it, when it will have cleared the trees and hills on your horizon. By 2am it will be higher still in the sky and even easier to see, too. Mars looks like a bright star, and you'd probably expect it to be a vivid red colour, but it isn't. Although Mars is famously known as the Red Planet it really looks more orange-yellow to be honest - if you're old enough to remember orange Spangles, it's the colour of one of those!

If you have a pair of binoculars they will enhance both the colour and brightness of Mars, really helping it stand out from the background stars. And if you're not sure you're looking at Mars - a tip: stars twinkle, planets don't, they shine with a steady light. Handy to bear this in mind because there's quite a bright red star in the same part of the sky as Mars at the moment.

In around 20 or so years time astronauts will fly to Mars, so why not look for it in the midnight sky on the next clear night and see for yourself where we will take our next 'Giant Leap..?'

Stuart Atkinson, Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal