April 2007

by Deane Morrison

This year April belongs to Venus. After sunset our brilliant sister planet vaults to nearly its highest position in the evening sky, while all around it the stars of winter flow by en route to temporary oblivion behind the sun. On the 11th, the lovely star cluster the Pleiades passes Venus to the northwest. Look also for Aldebaran, the eye of Taurus, gliding by on the other side of the planet. On the 19th, a crescent moon hangs between Venus and the Pleiades, which soon will disappear over the horizon.

Not to be outdone, Jupiter is also getting ready for its big closeup. The king of planets begins rising before midnight by the end of the month, appearing as a beacon above Scorpius as it rears its head in the southeast. Starting on the 6th, the giant planet moves slowly closer to the S-shaped constellation and its brightest star--huge, reddish Antares. Jupiter's best moment will come early in June, when Earth glides between it and the sun.

Saturn, the other bright evening planet, comes out high in the southwest at dusk. If you have a telescope, this is a very good time to see the planet, and you may even see its shadow on the rings. Saturn is near Regulus, the brightest star in Leo. Regulus anchors the Sickle, a backward question mark of stars outlining the magnificent head of the beast. Preceding Leo is the lovely star cluster known as the Beehive, and taking up the rear is another cluster, Coma Berenices; both make wonderful objects for binoculars. Saturn occupies second place in Leo's retinue, between the Beehive and the Sickle.

Early risers may see Mars, low in the east-southeast at dawn. The Red Planet is brightening but won't become spectacular until late fall.

The full moon of April, known to Algonquin Indian tribes as the grass moon, the egg moon or the pink moon (for the flowers of the wild ground phlox), arrives at 12:15 p.m. CDT on the 2nd, about eight hours before it rises.

The Lyrid meteor shower pours down its fireballs the night of the 22nd-23rd. Lyrids are typically fast and can be quite bright, with persistent trails. The meteors radiate from a spot just west of the brilliant star Vega in Lyra, which clears the eastern horizon by around 10 p.m. A fat crescent moon will still be up in the opposite part of the sky, but all in all, 2007 is a reasonably good year for this shower.

April ends with a Celtic holiday. We call it May Day, but to the Celts it was Beltane and it began at sundown on April 30, when all the witches and other evil spirits came out for a last fling. They reveled until dawn, when they were banished from the world of humans until sundown six months later, on the night we know as Halloween. May Day/Beltane is an astronomical holiday, what the Celts called a cross-quarter day because it fell midway between an equinox and a solstice. Hardly anybody celebrates that night anymore, except the inhabitants and tourists of Germany's Harz Mountains.