April Night Skies
Stars and Constellations
● Some
prominent constellations visible in the evening sky are Bootes, Coma Berenices
and Virgo
● Follow the
‘handle’ stars of the Big Dipper star group southward to the star Arcturus in
Bootes, and then further south to the star Spica in Virgo
● Arcturus
is a bright (first magnitude) orange star rising in the east during spring
evenings
● Spica is a
bright (first magnitude) blue star lower in the southeastern sky during spring
evenings
● Coma
Berenices is a small group of faint stars west of Arcturus, and nearly overhead
by late evening
● The region
of sky in the direction of Virgo and Coma Berenices contains numerous galaxies
that can be seen in a moderate-size telescope in a dark sky
Planets
● Mercury is mostly not visible except with difficulty very low in the southeastern sky before sunrise and reaches greatest western elongation April 3
● Venus shines brightly very low in the western sky
after sunset
● Mars is not practically visible, remaining close to
the sun’s position in the sky
● Jupiter is visible high in the western sky (nearly
overhead) in the Gemini constellation
●
●
●
●
● First Quarter Moon April 23, 22:32 EDT
Some website resources for sky charts, weekly sky events,
and more information:
● astrogeo.ca/skylights
● www.heavens-above.com
● In-the-sky.org
● www.skyandtelescope.org
● www.skymaps.com
Noteworthy Sky Events
Monthly Sky Chart for mid-April, mid-evening (courtesy of www.heavens-above.com):
No comments:
Post a Comment