Welcome to April! Our first full month of spring brings warmer weather, making time spent looking at the night sky more comfortable. But shorter nights, combined with daylight savings time, mean you’ll have to wait a bit longer for darkness in the evening. By the end of April, sunset will not come until about 8:15 p.m., and the sky will not be totally dark until about 10:15 p.m.
Jupiter and Mars are now the only planets visible in the evening sky. Venus moved between Earth and the Sun in late March and is now visible in the morning sky. If you have an unobstructed view of the eastern horizon, you can spot the bright “morning star” low in the sky before sunrise. Distant Saturn passed behind the Sun in late March and also is now in the morning sky. It will lie near Venus, but very dim and difficult to see.
Mars is still high overhead in the April evening sky but is growing fainter as it moves away from us. When it was closest, in mid-January, Mars was about 60 million miles distant. By the end of April, it will be more than 130 million miles away, more than twice as far as in January. At the start of the month, you will find Mars due south at 8:30 p.m., just below the Gemini twins, Pollux and Castor. Mars will be brighter than the twins, and reddish in color. Watch it during the month, and you will notice that it moves from right to left relative to the stars. By the end of April, Mars will have moved well to the left of Castor and Pollux, and will be located in the constellation Cancer. You can see why the ancient Greeks coined the word planetai (wanderer) to describe the “stars” they saw that wandered amongst the other stars with seemingly fixed positions.
The Lyrid meteor shower peaks on the evening of April 22-23. Lyrid meteors are from particles left from comet Thatcher, a long-period comet that visited the inner solar system in 1861. The best time to view will be after midnight. The waning crescent Moon will not rise until about 4:30 a.m., so it will not interfere.
We greet some new constellations in the April evening sky, as they rise in the east, and bid farewell to others as they sink in the western sky. In the west, bright winter constellations Orion and Taurus will still be visible, but very low in the sky. By the end of the month, they’ll set soon after the Sun. In the east, look for a couple of bright stars, Arcturus and Spica. They point the way to the dim constellations Bootes the sheepherder (Arcturus) and Virgo (Spica). Arcturus is the fourth brightest star in the night sky, and Spica is 16th. A trick to help locate them is to use the Big Dipper, high in the northeastern sky. Follow the curve of the Dipper’s handle down and to the right, and you will come to Arcturus. Follow the curve a bit farther and you come to Spica. Give it a try on a clear April evening!
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