APRIL  2026

Moon Phases

Full Moon Thursday 2nd    Third Quarter Friday 10th   New Moon Friday 17th    First Quarter Friday 24th

Moon Distance

Tuesday 7th is lunar apogee (furthest from Earth) at 404,970 km. Sunday 19th is lunar perigee (nearest to Earth) at 361,633 km.

Planets

Mercury is visible early in the month in the eastern sky from around 4:20am before fading by sunrise. It will appear a little earlier each morning before it finally is lost to view as it moves behind then Sun. 

Venus will become visible again by the 18th as it emerges from the Sun when it will be in the north-west from around 6pm before setting by 7pm.0am.

Mars will return to our skies later this month after its passage behind the Sun. On the 18th the Red Planet will be in the east before dawn from 5am and then fade by sunrise.

Jupiter will be visible in the north from 6:15pm early in the month before setting in the west around 11pm. During the month it will rise and set a little earlier each night.

Saturn will become visible again by the 20th in the eastern early morning skies from around 5am before being lost in the dawn light.

Meteors

April's main shower, The Lyrids, is centred near the bright star Vega low in the north at 3am. It is active from 16th to 25th peaking on the 22nd to 23rd. Better placed is the Pi-Puppids associated with Comet Grigg-Skjellerup which peaks on 24th centred low in the south-west near Canopus in Carina.

Stars and constellations

In the South

The Southern Cross can be found on its side in the south-east with the Two Pointers below. To the right of the Cross, in the south-western sky, is the star Canopus, the second brightest star in the night sky. Low in the south is Achernar, the head of the river Eridanus. Achernar never sets in Melbourne and is called a circumpolar star as it moves through an apparent circle around the South Celestial Pole as Earth rotates on its axis, half the circle during the night when visible and the other half during daytime.

In the North to South-West

If a dark location you can see the Large and Small Clouds of Magellan, two small neighbouring galaxies to our own Milky Way. They appear as irregular fuzzy patches isolated from the broad band of stars that runs across the sky which is our edge-on view of own galaxy. In less light-polluted skies you can also see in the Milky Way several dark regions that are vast clouds of dust. Whilst we may see a few foreground stars, the dark areas behind obscure our view of more distant stars of the galaxy.

In the West

Orion, the hunter, is in the west lying almost on his side with the red-giant star Betelgeuse as one of his shoulders. The three bright stars that form an obvious line are Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. They mark his belt and also conveniently the base of the local 'Saucepan' asterism. The handle of the saucepan is Orion's scabbard which hangs from his belt. 

Continuing the belt stars above and a little to the right we reach Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky and principal star in Canis Major (greater or larger dog) which is one of Orion's hunting dogs. Below Sirius in the north-west is Procyon which marks the position of his lesser or smaller dog Canis Minor. Below Orion and drawing closer to the horizon during the month is the Hyades, an open group of stars that form a sideways wedge or V. This is the triangular head of Taurus, the bull, with his 'angry eye' as the red-giant star Aldebaran on the corner.

In the North

In the north but upside down from our southern hemisphere perspective is Leo, the lion. This constellation is easily recognised by the hook shape (or inverted backwards question mark) of stars that forms the mane on the lion's head and shoulders. To the left of Leo and close together are the two bright stars Castor and Pollux, the principal stars in the constellation of Gemini, the twins which appears upside down as well from southern latitudes.

In the east

Later this month and into May the spectacular constellation of Scorpius will begin its return to our evening skies. This is one of the largest constellations and when it appears low in the east you can easily identify to the left its long curving tail leading to its body containing the red-giant star Antares marking its heart, and to the right its pincers reaching out.

On this day

1st 1948 Alpha, Bethe and Gamow publish their famous paper on the 'hot Big Bang'.
2nd 1845 Fizeau and Foucault take the first photograph of the Sun.
3rd 1966 The Luna 10 (USSR) became the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon.
6th 1973 The Pioneer 11 (USA) probe launched to Jupiter and Saturn.
8th 1732 The birth of David Rittenhouse who determined Earth-Sun distance of 150 million km.
9th 1959 NASA's first cohort of astronauts, "the Mercury 7", are announced.
11th 1905 Einstein's 'Special Theory of Relativity' is published.
11th 1970 The Apollo13 (USA) was launched on its ill-fated mission.
12th 1633 Galileo's trial by the Catholic Inquisition, on the question of a sun-centred solar system, begins in Rome.
12th 1961 The Yuri Gagarin (USSR) became the first human in space orbiting Earth for 108 minutes in Vostok 1.
12th 1981 The Columbia (USA) was the first space shuttle to be launched.
14th 1629 The birth of Christiaan Huygens who explained Saturn's rings and discovered its largest moon Titan.
16th 1495 The birth of Petrus Apianus who established that cometary tails at all times point away from the Sun.
18th 1971 The Salyut 1 (USSR), the first space station, was launched.
19th 1975 First Indian satellite, Aryabhata, is launched.
21st 1990 The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched on the space shuttle Discovery.
23rd 1992 COBE satellite reveals microwave temperature variation across universe.
27th 2002 Final telemetry received from probe Pioneer 10 (USA).
28th 1900 The birth of Dutch astronomer Jan Oort whose name is given to a vast cloud of icy objects thought to orbit the sun well beyond the Kuiper Belt.
28th 2001 American Dennis Tito became first space tourist paying the Russian Space Agency $US20 million to travel on a Soyuz craft to the ISS for an 8-day journey.
30th 1006 The brightest supernova ever recorded is seen in the constellation of Lupus.