April ’25 – Rick’s Picks

All month: the solar system balances morning and evening targets this month as Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Neptune move into the predawn sky, while Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus remain on the evening side of things. First to appear in the morning sky is Venus, visible on April 1 when it rises before 5:30 am and climbs to 6° elevation by 6:03 (a half hour before sunrise). It starts the month as a delicate narrow crescent, 57” wide and only 4% illuminated, but still blazing at mag -4.3. It remains a distinct crescent at mid-month, 47” across and 15% illuminated, and ends April 37” wide, 28% lit, and even brighter at mag -4.7, rising shortly after 4 am and reaching 12° a half hour before sunrise, now 5:17 am. Mercury becomes visible by the 11th when it rises before 5:30 am as a thick crescent, 9.6” wide and 27% illuminated, glowing at mag +1.0 but barely reaching 3° elevation by 5:46 am (a half hour before sunrise) due to the shallow morning ecliptic at this time of year. By month’s end it’s a 7” disk 58% lit, brightening to mag 0.0 but still less than 3° up a half hour before sunrise. Saturn also emerges from the morning glare by the 11th, sitting 3° above the horizon and just to the right of Mercury a half hour before sunrise, a 16” orb wrapped in 37” rings and glowing at mag +1.2, remaining about the same size and brightness for the rest of the month – and very difficult to spot in the morning twilight. We now see the south face of the rings for the first time since 2009, but they’re still nearly flat, tilted only 1.6° to our perspective. Neptune rounds out the morning lineup: although it rises just a few minutes after Saturn, it’s much fainter at mag 7.9, and will be, at best, a very difficult target near month’s end. Turning to the evening sky, the first planet to set is Uranus, which disappears before 11 pm as April begins and two hours earlier as it ends, its 3.5” disk glowing at mag 5.8 on its way to solar conjunction in mid-May. Next is mighty Jupiter, setting around 12:30 am on the 1st but just after 11 pm on the 30th, shrinking from 36” to 34” and dimming slightly from mag -2.1 to -2.0 along the way. Now almost an afterthought, the increasingly-tiny face of Mars monopolizes the late-night slot, setting around 3:30 am as the month opens and shortly after 2:00 am as it ends. Its surface features seem like a distant memory as it shrivels from 8.2” to 6.6” in diameter and dims from mag +0.4 to +0.9 over the course of the month. Among the asteroids, 4 Vesta provides a naked-eye target (at least from dark sites) before midnight all month long, as it approaches opposition on May 2. This month’s charts will show you where to find it.
April 1: it’s no April Fool’s trick tonight when the elegant crescent Moon, just 18% illuminated, hangs 1.5° above The Pleiades (M45), while Jupiter watches the display from above left. Start with binoculars to put Luna and the cluster’s stars in the same field, then switch to a telescope to watch Europa and Ganymede dance cheek to cheek, just 10 arcseconds apart, as they chase Jupiter towards the horizon. From now through the 5th, the evening sky is bursting with bright orbs as Jupiter, Mars, and the ever-growing Moon add their lights to the already impressive stars of the Winter Hexagon in a constantly changing pattern.
April 5: the first-quarter Moon crosses tonight’s sky as the short arm of a backwards-L (or -7) whose long arm is an equally-spaced but ragged line of mag +0.5 Mars, mag 1.1 Pollux, and mag 1.9 Castor. The three of them form a rough line for at least the next week, becoming perfectly straight on the 10th.
April 11: Jupiter’s hot little moon Io marches across the face of its planet from 7:34 to 9:46 pm CDT, followed by its shadow from 8:39 to 10:52 pm.
April 12: Europa mimics Io’s stroll across Jupiter tonight from 6:45 to 9:21 pm CDT, followed by its shadow from 8:51 to 11:30 pm, shortly before they both set at 12:03 am. In the meantime, watch the full Moon rise at 7:33 pm in tandem with mag 1.0 Spica (Alpha [] Virginis) less than a half-degree away; the two worlds slowly separate as the night proceeds, but they remain within 4° of each other when morning twilight arrives.
April 14: the Galilean Moons show us an unusual look tonight as they pair off, with Io and Europa following close behind the planet, while Ganymede and Callisto form a slightly wider pair following farther behind. The pairings are obvious from sunset until the group sets at 11:57 pm CDT, but both pairs tighten up as the night progresses, so the more dramatic views come as Jove nears the western horizon.
April 19 (night of the 18th): night owls and early risers can watch the third-quarter Moon rise inside the Sagittarius “teapot” at 1:40 am CDT, and stay there until it sets in the morning twilight.
April 22 (night of the 21st): the Lyrids meteor shower peaks this morning, and since the Moon won’t rise until 3:30 am CDT (just 45 minutes before the beginning of morning astronomical twilight), it should be a good night for meteor hounds. The Lyrids are formed from debris left behind by C/1861 G1 Thatcher, a long-period comet that visits the inner solar system every 415 years or so, leaving a dusty mess in its wake. They’re active from April 14 to 30 and appear to emanate from a point near Vega (Alpha [] Lyrae). Lyrids are bright fast-movers, with frequent persistent trains, but the debris field is not dense, so they exhibit a relatively low ZHR: even with this year’s favorable conditions, expect to see around 10 meteors/hour from a dark site, or 3-5/hour from the suburbs. The Lyrids have a relatively narrow peak, remaining at or above 50% of maximum for only 1.3 days.
April 23: watch Jupiter low in the west for an unusual transit by Ganymede from 5:55 to 8:28 pm CDT, followed by its shadow from 9:46 pm until after the planet sets at 11:30 pm.
April 24-25: if you’re an early riser, look low in the east at 5:25 am CDT on the 24th (a half hour before sunrise), and see if you can spot mag +1.2 Saturn to the lower right of Venus, forming a triangle with the crescent Moon to the pair’s right. If you succeed, see if you can also spot mag +0.2 Mercury on the line from the Moon to Saturn and just over one step farther. The pattern shifts on the 25th: Venus, the Moon and Saturn still form a triangle, but the Moon has shifted left, and Mercury is now just over one step farther on the Venus-Moon line.
April 27: hot little Io crosses Jupiter once more, from 6:05 to 8:18 pm CDT, followed by its shadow from 6:59 to 9:12 pm. Both of them set not long thereafter, at 11:17 pm.
April 28: new Moon arrived yesterday at 2:31 pm CDT, so at 8:32 pm tonight (45 minutes after sunset) it will be a challenging catch: 30 hours old, 8½° above the horizon, vanishingly thin at just over 2% illuminated, and 3° to the right of the spot where the Sun went down. See if you can also spot The Pleiades (M45) 4° to its upper left – then for a further challenge, try for mag 5.8 Uranus 4° to its lower left (6° below M45).
April 30: Mars crosses the sky tonight just 2° ahead of the Beehive Cluster (M44), putting the planet and cluster well within a very pretty 5° binocular field of view. Meanwhile, farther to the west, a gorgeous 3-day-old crescent Moon follows 6° behind Jupiter as the pair dive towards the horizon from sunset til the planet sets at 11:08 pm CDT.
Rick Gering / April 2025