WE ARE midway through March and that means that, with the Sun not setting until around 7pm, the sky is now not dark enough to do any stargazing until around 8pm, writes STUART ATKINSON. When twilight ends you can see the planet Mars low in the west, clearly visible to the naked eye as an orange star but nowhere near as bright or as obvious as it was last year. To the left of Mars the stars of Orion are still visible but as darkness falls they are low in the south west, and soon - like all the other winter constellations - the mighty Hunter will be gone from our evening sky for another year.

Early risers can see the planet Jupiter shining brightly low in the south east before sunrise. This enormous world - so huge it could easily contain a thousand Earths with room to spare - looks like a very bright blue-white star in the sky, and even a modest pair of binoculars will show you its four largest moons as tiny pinprick stars next to the planet itself.

If the sky is clear before sunrise on the morning of Wednesday, March 27, we'll be able to see Jupiter shining very close to a beautiful gibbous (that's astronomy speak for not quite half) Moon, low in the south east from around 3am. By 5am the sky will be starting to brighten as sunrise approaches so you'll only have a brief window in which to catch these two lovely worlds keeping each other company in the sky.