SKYLIGHTS

Skylights featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day

Skylights featured nine times on Earth Science Picture of the Day: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -- Full List Restored!

Photo of the Week.. It's Spring!

Astronomy news for the two weeks starting Friday, April 21, 2017.

Please Note

Skylights has been produced in various forms for 31 years, since 1985, and even before that as an annual bulletin. It's now time to simplify Skylights and bring part of it to a close. We will continue to list lunar phases, planetary passages, and other significant events for the coming two weeks on this website, but by bullet, not by prose text. Because there will no longer be any script, the telephone and emailing services have been dropped. The Star of the Week will continue as before, as will the Photo of the Week. Thanks all for your support.
Jim Kaler

The next Skylights will appear Friday, May 5.

The Moon
- The interval is spent almost entirely with the Moon in a crescent phase: waning crescent in the east until new Moon on Wednesday, April 26, then waxing crescent in western evenings thereafter.
- The evening of Friday the 28th, see the Moon to the east (above)Aldebaran. The following night it will be southeast of Zeta Tauri.
- The Moon passes five degrees south of Venus at noon (not visible).
- The Moon passes 6 degrees south of Mars.
- The Moon will be just east of Regulus the night of Monday, April 10.
- The Moon is at perigee, closest to Earth, Thursday, April 27.
Planets and the Solar System
- Mars will be between the Hyades and Pleiades of Taurus a few days around Friday, April 21.
- Venus, now a brilliant "morning star," rises at dawn.
- Venus will be at greatest brilliancy, Sunday, April 30.
- Jupiter is west of the meridian to the south an hour after the end of twilight; at the same time, Saturn rises in the east.
- Time for the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, May 5-7, the debris of Comet Halley, as are the Orionids of October.
The Sky
- This is the best time of year for early-evening viewing of Big Dipper, the Bear itself sprawls well to the west and south of it. In the other direction, to the north, we pass through the stars of Draco, the Dragon, and Camelopardalis (the Giraffe) until we reach the prize, Polaris, Alpha Ursae Minoris, (in Ursa Minor, the Smaller Bear), about which the sky seems to turn. Though Polaris is not exactly at the true pole and circles around it, its nightly motion is insensible to the eye. Now just under three-fourths of a degree from the pole, precession, the 26-000-year wobble of the Earth's rotational axis, will bring the two to within half a degree of each other early in the next century. In the opposite direction, the south pole of the sky has no bright star to mark its place, only faint Sigma Octantis, in Octans (the obvious Octant), which has the nearly the same separation from its pole as does Polaris, but which is getting worse, rather than better. Two other constellation pairs come in, "major" and "minor" forms, Canis Major and Minor (Orion's Hunting Dogs), which lie far to the southwest of the Big Dipper, and Leo and Leo Minor, both south of Ursa Major, the latter on the back of the former

Primary source: The Astronomical Almanac.

Copyright © James B. Kaler, all rights reserved. The written contents and (unless otherwise specified) the photograph are the property of the author and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the author's consent except in fair use for educational purposes.