On May 25 1961, US President Kennedy famously committed his nation to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out.

Just three weeks earlier, on May 5, Alan Shepherd had become the first American in space. Three weeks before, Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, achieved worldwide fame when he orbited the Earth for the first time. Now the race for the moon was on.

Six months after his momentous speech, Kennedy was dead but his pledge was honoured when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon just eight years later.

Since those heady days manned spaceflight has been restricted to the more modest confines of our upper atmosphere.

Look to the west at 10.05 pm on 1st and see if you can spot a bright "star" travelling steadily across the sky to the southeast. Visible for about three minutes, you will be watching humanity's only home in space to date.

The International Space Station and its current two man crew circuit the Earth every 90 minutes in an orbit approximately 220 miles high.

NASA's announcement of a new initiative to resume human space exploration beginning with a return to the moon is a long awaited one. Like me, many enthusiasts of a certain age remember watching that "one small step by man" on a black and white TV and dreaming of a time when space travel would become as everyday as catching the school bus.

Until then you can journey light years into space by simply lifting your eyes to the sky and browsing the heavens.

With the aid of a pair of binoculars and/or a telescope, you can also travel in time and see galaxies and nebulae as they were millions of years ago.

These objects are so mind bogglingly far away that the light with which we see them has taken millions of years to get here. All this from your own back garden.

At a mere 57 million miles away, Mercury is a little nearer to home. Later this month the sun's closest planetary companion may be seen hugging the north-west horizon about an hour after sunset.

Brilliant Venus will be low in the east all month and shining with a magnitude of -4. (Remember, the lower the order of magnitude, the brighter the object so a minus figure is quite bright indeed).

If you are an early riser, you may glimpse it just before sunrise. Look out for a very thin crescent moon nearby on the 24th.

Mars continues to fade in the evening sky. Locate the Red Planet in the constellation of Gemini (Heavenly Twins' Castor and Pollux) where it will be 5 degrees south of Pollux on the 25th and 4 degrees north of a thin sliver of a moon on 2nd.

Taking centre stage in the early summer sky is our largest planet, mighty Jupiter. Positioned on the far side of the Earth to the sun it reaches opposition on 4th and so becomes visible all night.

Glowing with a magnitude of -2.5 among the stars of Libra it will be 5 degrees north of a nearly full moon on the 12th. Although not quite as high up in the sky as last year, this gas giant makes a great subject for observation.

A small telescope or even good binoculars will pick out the main cloud belts, the Great Red Spot and, of course, the four inner Galilean moons.

Named for the Italian astronomer, Galileo, who was the first to observe them through a telescope in 1610, the satellites of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto can be seen dotted around their parent planet or, sometimes, strung out in a line.

Saturn is slowly sinking into the west and by the end of May will set by the early hours. It is a wonderful sight through a small telescope, having bands of clouds like Jupiter but not quite as defined.

Looks can be deceptive, however, for while we admire its beauty from afar, all is not sweetness and light on the ringed planet 54.

Enormous storms rage over its surface fuelled by energy from massive blasts of heat emanating from deep within its interior as it slowly shrinks and cools.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has imaged storms on Saturn extending more than 1000 kilometres (620 miles) in diameter - about the size of France.

Compare this to Hurricane Katrina with a breadth of 240 miles and remember the devastation caused to the southeast US coast last year. On Saturn the storms never die down. It is worth mentioning here that the Cassini mission's latest and most exciting discovery so far is the evidence of water on one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus.

At just over 100 miles in altitude, the spacecraft flew through huge plumes of icy material blown out from cracks in the moon's surface. Instruments onboard analysed samples and found evidence of carbon dioxide, methane and water.

Although it is too soon to be certain, the existence of water below the surface of Enceladus leads to immediate and understandable speculation about the possibility of finding life.

Take the opportunity to observe Saturn this month if you can as it will slip out of our sight very soon. Look out for it 4 degrees north of the moon on the 4th and 31st.

Outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are all early morning objects and difficult to see in the early twilight.

The summer constellations are well placed with the Plough high in the north-west at midnight. Check out your star-maps for Leo, Virgo and Hercules, home to the famous globular cluster, M13.

Interested in learning why the Pope has an astronomer? Come along to Thinktank, Millennium Point at 7.30pm on 2nd to hear Guy Consolmagno - Jesuit brother, astronomer and writer from the Vatican Observatory, describe his work. Call 0121 202 2222 for your free ticket or book online.

Check out our website at www.birmingham-astronomy.co.uk

(c) 2006 Birmingham Post; Birmingham (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

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