The Night Sky in April
If you have had an opportunity to look south west under clear, post-sunset skies over the past weeks, you may have seen what resembles a plane heading towards you with its landing lights blazing. Except, this is no plane – it’s the return of the planet Venus to the evening sky. Enshrouded by thick reflective clouds and closer to the Sun than Earth, Venus shines like a jewel in the morning or evening twilight. For the rest of winter and throughout spring, we’ll have the planet on view in the evening sky.
The bright object higher up is the planet Jupiter, which is slowly but surely drifting further to the west with each passing day. Venus is heading in the opposite direction as it slowly appears to edge further from the sun. As a consequence, both planets are set to meet at the end of February and start of March. The meeting will be impressive too.
If you get clear evenings from mid-february onwards, it should be obvious the pair are converging.
On February 22 a clear evening will bring the lovely sight of Venus, Jupiter and a thin waxing crescent moon sitting slightly below the mid-point of the line joining both planets. This will be easily seen by the naked eye, and can be captured on a smartphone.
Smallest apparent separation occurs on the evenings of March 1 and 2. On March 1, they appear 38 arc-minutes apart, while on March 2 the gap will have widened slightly to 47 arc-minutes. For reference, the apparent diameter of the moon is around 30 arc-minutes.
The separation is a line-of-sight effect, of course. Despite their apparent close arrangement, the planets are really quite distant from one another. On March 1, for example, Venus is 127.1 million miles from Earth, Jupiter 536.6 million. This means, despite their close sky proximity, there’s actually 409.5 million miles between the planets.
The spectacle of Venus meeting Jupiter isn’t the only planetary meet-up this month. Given clear skies on the evening of February 15, a binocular view of bright Venus will show a dim starlike object below and to the right of the planet. This is the planet Neptune, the solar system’s most distant main planet and the dimmest visible from Earth. Spot them together and you’re looking at the brightest and dimmest planets in the sky. Venus will be 52,000 times brighter than Neptune on this date.
Did you manage to spot comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) last month? According to some headlines you should have seen a blazing green cometary spectacle. Of course, this wasn’t the case at all, and just as described in last month’s night sky column it was little more than a smudge of light through binoculars. It’s still there during February, giving you a last chance to spot it before it fades to obscurity for many thousands of years.
Using binoculars or a small telescope with a low power (wide field) eyepiece, the comet passes close to bright Capella in Auriga on February 5/6 and close to the star Hassaleh, also in Auriga, on the night of February 8/9. It has a relatively close encounter with Mars on the night of February 11/12 and will be east of the vee-shaped Hyades open cluster in Taurus on the night of February 13/14. On the night of 14/15 it passes 2 degrees (that’s two little finger widths at arm’s length) east (left) of the star Aldebaran in Taurus. Find Aldebaran by extending the line of Orion’s belt up and right (north west). The comet will not be bright, but will appear like a small smudge of light, best seen in a dark sky. Give your eyes at least 20 minutes in darkness for the best view.