{"id":516,"date":"2020-03-29T19:39:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T19:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/?p=516"},"modified":"2020-03-29T19:39:21","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T19:39:21","slug":"april-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/april-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"April 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Evening<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

April begins with\nVenus just below the Pleiades in the evening sky. A first quarter\nmoon is just above Wasat in Gemini near the meridian at sunset. Leo\nis rising with Bo\u00f6tes rising below it. Wait until after midnight and\nyou’ll see Lyra and Cygnus rising. One of the best planetary\nget-togethers in a long time continues in the hours before sunrise\nwith Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars just east of Sagittarius. Mercury is a\nmorning object when April starts, but it’s rising soon soon before\nsunrise you may have trouble finding it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moving<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Venus\nglides right by the Pleiades on the 3rd<\/sup>,\nlooking like it’s the seventh sister home for a reunion, shining\nbright and getting the most attention. If you have looked upon this\nasterism in wonder of why the stars are called the seven sisters when\nyou see only six, you’re not the first. Greek legends go back at\nleast a couple thousand years as to why one sister or another is\nhiding or absent. She may be Elektra, in hiding while Troy burns. She\nmay be Merope, who married a mortal and no longer deserves the same\nglory as the rest. Or she may be Cel\u00e6no,\nblasted out of the sky by a thunderbolt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAn\nOnondaga legend also relates this star cluster as having a missing\nmember. The story tells of a party of Indians whose children danced\nevery day by a lake. During a lull in the hunting time, they had\nlittle food and should have been conserving their energy. But they\ndidn’t, even after an old, wise man appeared to warn them. And then,\nduring one of their dances, the children began rising into the sky.\nThe one who looked back became a falling star. The rest became the\nasterism the Onondaga call Oot-kwa-tah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\nthe 26th<\/sup>,\nVenus has moved well on toward Auriga. A waxing crescent moon is\nnearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mercury,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe morning sky, Mars has moved over the course of a few weeks from\nthe west side of Sagittarius to the east side where Jupiter and\nSaturn are also stationed now. The red planet is close to the ringed\nplanet on the morning of the 1st<\/sup>.\nJupiter is just a little west of them. Jupiter and Saturn aren’t\nmoving much. They are still between Sagittarius and Capricornus on\nthe 14th<\/sup>,\n15th<\/sup>,\nand 16th<\/sup>,\nwhen a waning moon is in the neighborhood and Mars is deep into the\nconstellation of the goat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moving<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Uranus is an\nevening object for most of this month, but not by much. The planet is\nmoving eastward. The sun is moving eastward faster. Uranus is in\nconjunction on the 26th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moon is at\nfirst quarter on the 1st<\/sup>. It’s also at lunistice the same\nday, 23.7\u00b0 north of the equator. People at or close to the Tropic of\nCancer will see the moon overhead right about the time the sun sets.\nThe moon is at perigee 356,900 km from the earth when it crosses the\nequator southward on the 7th<\/sup> and is full on the 8th<\/sup>.\nSouthern lunistice is on the 13th<\/sup>. Last quarter is on the\n14th<\/sup>. Apogee occurs on the 20th<\/sup> at 406,500 km.\nThe moon goes north of the equator again on the 23rd<\/sup> and\nreaches northern lunistice again on the 28th<\/sup>. This month\nhas a second first quarter on the 30th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moon’s notable\nconjunctions this month are with Pollux on the 2nd<\/sup>,\nJupiter on the 14th<\/sup>, Saturn on the 15th<\/sup>, Mars\non the 16th<\/sup>, Neptune on the 19th<\/sup>, Mercury on\nthe 21st<\/sup>, Uranus on the 23rd<\/sup>, Aldebaran on the\n26th<\/sup>, and Pollux again on the 29th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neptune and\nMercury will be 1.3\u00b0 apart on the 4th<\/sup>. Pluto and Jupiter\nare 0.7\u00b0 apart on the 5th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nLyrids meteor shower possible peak time is at 6 hours UT on the 22nd<\/sup>.\nWith an almost new moon, there’ll be little moon light to interfere.\nThe parent comet is C\/1861 G1 Thatcher. With observations noted from\nas long ago as 687 BC, this shower is believed to be the oldest one\nobserved that still exists. This is a mainly northern hemisphere\nshower. The radiant point, near Lyra, rises in mid-evening local\ntime, so most of the night can be a good time to observe. The best\ntime is as dawn approaches but before the morning light interferes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April begins with Venus just below the Pleiades in the evening sky. A first quarter moon is just above Wasat in Gemini near the meridian at sunset. Leo is rising with Bo\u00f6tes rising below it. Wait until after midnight and you’ll see Lyra and Cygnus rising. One of the best planetary get-togethers in a long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-59"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skycaramba.com\/monthly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}