Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to take a quick look ahead into the coming month of April. April is coming up, and there aren’t too many particularly crazy events happening in April. It will be after the solar eclipse that’s coming up at the end of this month, which I will cover before the end of the week. There are no solar eclipses, there is no parade of planets, but there are still some interesting things to see as we go through the coming month.

We will begin by looking at sunset on April 1st. April 1st is also known as April Fool’s Day, but don’t worry I’m not going try and fool anybody. As the Sun goes down we can see Jupiter emerge followed by Mars. By just a little after sunset, almost 8 o’clock, Mars is already pretty much directly above due south, with Jupiter already over in the southwest. They’re both going to start getting lower and lower each evening. They’re definitely not going to be with us all night or nearly the whole night, as they have been for the past couple of months in the early part of this year.

The Moon is also up with these planets in the evening for the early part of the month, so we’ll take a closer look at the Moon here as well. I know that on April 1st it’s not going to be particularly full, coming so soon after a solar eclipse. It is indeed a narrow crescent on the 1st, and at around 8:30 it is just coming up to the Seven Sisters or the Pleiades. As we move through 9 and up to 10 o’clock, the Moon slides right in front of this open cluster of stars. There will be an occultation of the Pleiades by the Crescent Moon on April 1st. This will happen while the Moon is quite low in the sky, due to it’s phase, but it should still be visible to most people. Thanks to the fact that it’s a Crescent Moon that ‘s causing this eclipse, it could produce an interesting illusion. Depending on how illuminated the night-time portion of the Moon is by Earth glow, it’s going to look like the Seven Sisters just kind of disappear. The leading portion of the Moon, the part that will block out the stars first, will just look dark. It should, or at least it usually does, blend in with the darkness of space, becoming practically invisible. As the night time portion of the Moon blocks out the Pleiades, we’ll see the bright crescent of the Moon a short distance away, potentially with just darkness in between. If the Moon really blends in with the black background of space, as it often does, it would look like one member of the Pleiades has simply vanished, long before the portion of the Moon that we can see has actually gotten in the way. This occultation is one nice thing that’s coming up. As we continue to move through the month, the Moon does pass pretty close to Jupiter and Mars, but not enough to cause an occultation with any of those objects.

As we started with sunset on the 1st, moving forward means that we’re not going to catch sunrise on the 1st. Of course, I could go back and look, but we’re going to go with sunrise on the 2nd anyway, 24-hours will make a difference to something like the Moon, but the Moon is up at sunset. For the planets that we’re going to see at sunrise we don’t have to worry too much. 24-hours can make a difference for a small fast planet like Mercury for example, but for slower moving objects like Venus and Saturn, it’s not going to make an obvious difference. At sunrise we can see Venus very clearly. We will only be seeing Venus in the morning once we get into April. By this, I mean we will be seeing Venus exclusively in the morning once we get into April, not that we will be able to see Venus in the morning exclusively in April. I mentioned in a previous video the Double Venus phenomenon that we just experienced, because Venus was high above the Sun we could see it at sunrise and sunset. By the time we’re into April, Venus will be more significantly to the side of the Sun and only visible in the morning.

We’re not seeing Mercury or Saturn at sunrise just yet. They are just above the horizon for us here in Ireland, so if you were closer to the equator there is a chance that you’d already be seeing Mercury and Saturn as the Sun rises. For us here in Ireland, the angle of the ecliptic keeps them out of view. To look at the sunrise later in the month, firstly we’re going to have to push back earlier in the morning, to about 5:30/5:20, before we start moving forward day by day. Otherwise, because we’re moving closer to summer time, if we moved forward day by day at a later time, closer to the sunrise, the Sun would come up and then the objects would get blocked out anyway. You can check out my previous piece about the equinox to see the changing times of sunrise over April. Even by the end of the month we’re not really catching Saturn from the city, and Mercury will have left the morning sky. It looks like Mercury and Saturn together in the morning is something that will be more visible if you are closer to the equator.

Moving into the month means we’re coming up to the Full Moon here. Back to 8 o’clock but on the 12th of April and there is the Full Moon. The Moon is still nice bright even when it’s coming up so close to the sunset. In the middle of the month at 8 o’clock the sky is still quite bright, we’ll have to move quite late before it gets dark. Doing this allows us to see that Orion is already starting to leave the sky just after sunset even in early April here. Pushing forward another few days and heading out to the countryside, now that we are a little bit closer to the actual middle of April, we’ll get rid of the light pollution. Later in the month there’s still a little bit of sunset glow at almost 9 o’clock. Once you’re in the countryside the Pleiades and Orion’s Sword are easier to spot, but they are going to be leaving the sky as we come into summertime. They’re already low to the southwest by just 9 o’clock in late April. Leo the Lion is already in a great position high above the south, and the outer arm of the Milky Way is there as well. It’s not quite setting with the Sun by late April, but it’s just barely visible at 9:20. It will be gone by midnight, so we’re losing that portion of the Milky Way now.

Close to the middle of the night, Vesta is in a good position to try to observe. Vesta is one of the bigger asteroids, but one of the smallest things that can be seen if you’ve got a telescope or a binoculars. Vesta is smaller than a dwarf planet, but it is only in the asteroid belt, so it is visible with good equipment. By mid-April, by the time that we’ve got the glow of the core of Milky Way coming up, the Moon is pretty close to full. It’s less full by the time it’s actually in front of the core of the Milky Way, but it is still adding a significant amount of light. Moving forward, closer to the end of April, and the Milky Way rises above the horizon by just 1 o’clock. It’s still a little bit after midnight, but the nights aren’t so short yet that we won’t have very long to observe it. It’s only coming up at about 1 o’clock, but it will stay above the horizon before the glow of the Sun gets in the way. Most light won’t be a problem until about 5 o’clock, but the Milky way is quite faint. It is just about visible at 3:30, but along with the waning Moon at the end of the month, the Sun will block it out by about 4 o’clock. that means we’ve got a few hours, we’ve got a good 3 hours there where it’s visible. Now that we’re out in the countryside and through to the end of the month, we can catch Saturn as the Sun rises.

Mercury does reach its greatest western elongation over the course of April, however because of the angle at which we’re seeing it at the moment, at this time of year, Mercury isn’t going to be visible from Ireland even when it’s at its greatest elongation. It reaches it’s greatest elongation around the 11th while it is very very close to Saturn in the sky. However, both of those planets are much lower to the horizon than Venus. With Mercury and Saturn together above the horizon, the glow of the Sun is visible creeping over the horizon even with no atmosphere. The Sun isn’t above the horizon, but as I’ve shown in previous videos, the atmosphere refracts light. Even though the Sun is still not really above the horizon, enough of its light is getting bent by the air around us to interfere with our view of the smallest fastest planet.

Very quickly, we’re going to pull back closer to the middle of the night and we’re going to move forward towards the end of the month. I want to get the summer triangle in the sky, so we do need to move pretty late. April isn’t quite late enough in the year for the summer triangle to be up with us all night long. The summer triangle will be high in the sky by around 1 o’clock at the end of the month, with the Milky Way running through it. From here we will look for some meteor showers, particularly the April Lyrids. The Lyrids will radiate from the constellation of Lyra, forming one corner of the summer triangle with Vega. At the end of the month, the Moon isn’t there to interfere, and that’s a good thing, because the Lyrids peak on the 22nd. On the 22nd for a good portion of the night, right up until very close to morning time, the Moon is out of the way. The Early morning of the 22nd may be better than the night of the 22nd. Stellarium is showing up to 70 meteors an hour, but it could be as low as zero. This is a very variable shower, it goes up to 90 meteors an hour sometimes. This meteor shower is happening later in the month of April so I will deal with it in a little bit more detail then, but it is coming up. One interesting thing about the Lyrids is that they tend to persist. When you see a shooting star, it’s very often a brief streak across the sky, with the tail is disappearing while the front is still glowing. The trail left behind by a meteor is often quite brief, but with the Lyrids, from what I’ve read, they seem to persist, they last a little bit longer in the sky.

They are some of the things and some of the changes that we’ve got to look forward to coming into April. I hope you get to see some of these things in the sky and I hope that you enjoyed this piece. If you did, please do like it, you can also subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you’d like to see more of this kind of content. Thank you for reading, and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.