The Sky This Week: April 7 – 10
A good time for Zodical light, Mars grows brighter, and the Beehive Cluster buzzes into a prime position.
Thursday, April 7
New Moon occurs at 7:24 a.m. EDT. At its New phase, the Moon crosses the sky with the Sun and so remains hidden by our star. Because the Moon reaches perigee, the closest point in its orbit around Earth, only six hours later (at 1:36 p.m. EDT), residents in coastal areas can expect higher than normal tides for the next few days. At perigee, the center of the Moon lies 221,931 miles (357,163 kilometers) from Earth’s center.
Saturday, April 9
One of the spring sky’s finest deep-sky objects, the Beehive star cluster (M44) in the constellation Cancer the Crab, lies high in the south after darkness falls. With naked eyes under a dark sky, you should be able to spot this star group as a faint cloud even though a crescent Moon also occupies the evening sky. But the Beehive explodes into dozens of stars through binoculars or a small telescope.
Uranus is in conjunction with the Sun at 5 p.m. EDT. From our earthly perspective, this means the distant planet lies behind the Sun and so is out of sight. Uranus will return to view in the morning sky in May.
Sunday, April 10
The waxing crescent Moon appears just above the 1st-magnitude star Aldebaran in this evening’s sky. Binoculars provide the best view of this close conjunction because they also clearly reveal the neighboring Hyades, a V-shaped star cluster that Aldebaran appears to anchor. For residents of the United States, the Moon appears to pass in front of Aldebaran during the afternoon hours, at approximately 6 p.m. EDT (3 p.m. PDT).
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