BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy What's in the spring skies?

Days lengthen, flowers blossom and it's starting to get warmer. Even if your spring weather is late, daffodil-colored star Arcturus says it's spring. Use the Big Dipper to find Arcturus, Polaris the pole star, the constellation of Leo the lion, and a number of galaxies and nebulae.

Absolute Beginners - Spring Skies

Well, OK, it may not be balmy weather, but some places are getting clear skies. If you need to, wrap up and go and have a look. Arcturus is one of my favorite stars.

I've just been outside and Jupiter is still spectacularly bright and near Aldebaran (in Taurus the bull) in the west.

HubbleSite's short video on what's to see this month is at Hubble Site April Sky. It's about 6 and a half minutes. Worth watching with clear narration.

But I hope you don't have to rely on the captions on the video because they are simply appalling. They look as though they're a literal translation from some other language. I turned them on because the computer I'm using is so old I can't get sound on these videos. :-(

Here's a nice photograph of the spring sky, taken over Hirsau Abbey in Germany in 2009. It's taken with a fisheye lens, so the courtyard of the abbey is all around the the edge and the photo shows the whole sky. Spring sky from Hirsau Abbey.

If you run the cursor over the picture, you can see the main constellations. But I should mention that Saturn isn't going to be near Leo this April. It will be a bright object because it will be at its closest to us at the end of the month. But we'll see it between Virgo and Libra.

I pinned a lovely picture from Astronomy Picture of the Day which shows some of the things that are mentioned in the spring skies article. Skies over Mt Rushmore This picture was actually taken during the summer, but it showed some of the star patterns so clearly, I wanted to share it.