Scotland’s Sky in May, 2018

Jupiter’s conspicuous opposition in the Balance

The maps show the sky at 01:00 BST on the 1st, midnight on the 16th and 23:00 on the 31st. Arrows depict the motions of Jupiter during May and of Venus from the 20th. (Click on map to enlarge)

Jupiter is at its brightest and best in the constellation of Libra, the Weighing Scales or Balance, this month. Its opposition, when it stands directly opposite the Sun, occurs on the morning of the 9th but it is prominent every night as it transits low across the south from the south-east at nightfall to the south-west before dawn.

Venus, however, outshines it in the western evening sky and both Saturn and the increasingly striking Mars follow Jupiter into the southern morning sky.

The Sun climbs another 7° northwards during May as Edinburgh’s sunrise/sunset times change from 05:29/20:52 BST on the 1st to 04:36/21:45 on the 31st. Because twilight is also lengthening, official darkness in the middle of the night lasts for under one hour by May’s end.

The Moon is at last quarter on the 8th, new on the 15th, at first quarter on the 22nd and full on the 29th.

Venus stands 20° high in the west at sunset, sinking to set in the north-west by 23:40 on the 1st and one hour later by the 31st. Brilliant at magnitude -3.9, it begins the month 6° above-right of Taurus’ brightest star, Aldebaran, and tracks east-north-eastwards between the Bull’s horns to end May in mid-Gemini, below Castor and Pollux.

The young earthlit Moon makes an impressive sight almost 6° below-left of the planet on the evening of the 17th. Three days later, as Venus joins the region of sky covered by our chart, it passes 1.0° (two Moon-diameters) above-right of the star cluster M35 whose brightest stars may be glimpsed through binoculars from their distance of some 2,800 light years. Still on the far side of its orbit, Venus approaches from 217 million to 190 million km this month as its almost-full disk swells to 13 arcseconds in diameter.

After dominating our winter nights, Orion ducks below our western horizon as the evening twilight fades at present. The Plough is overhead and Leo high in the south with its main star Regulus which has a close encounter with the first quarter Moon on the night of 21st/22nd.

By our map times, Leo sis inking in the west and Jupiter is easily the most conspicuous object in the south though it stands barely 18° high for Edinburgh. Moving westwards in Libra, it lies close to the Moon on the 27th. Its motion takes it from 4° east (left) of the well-known double star Zubenelgenubi at present to lie just 1.0° north-east of the star on the 31st.

Jupiter is 658 million km away at opposition, shines at magnitude -2.5 and shows a 45 arcseconds wide disk through a telescope. Its two main darker cloud bands, its northern and southern equatorial belts, straddle a lighter equatorial zone. The famous Great Red Spot is gradually losing its status, however, being less than half as wide as it was a century ago and currently more salmon-pink in hue than red. It sits in a bay at the southern edge of the south equatorial belt and, like the many other Jovian cloud features, is carried smartly across the disk as the planet spins in just under ten hours.

Steadily-held binoculars show the four main moons of Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto which change their configuration to the east and west of Jupiter from night to night, sometimes disappearing as they hide behind Jupiter or cross the disk, along with their shadows.

If Jupiter’s low elevation makes telescopic views less than sharp, this is even more the case with Saturn which rises in the south-east at our map times and is 6° lower in the sky than Jupiter as it reaches the meridian just before dawn. Saturn improves from magnitude 0.4 to 0.2 as it creeps westwards above the Teapot asterism in Sagittarius. It lies 1,392 million km away at mid-month when its oblate globe is 18 arcseconds across set within 40 by 17 arcseconds rings that have their north face inclined at 26° to our view. Look for it 4° right of the Moon on the morning of the 5th.

Less than 2° below Saturn is the globular star cluster M22, a ball of thousands of stars that lies about 10,600 light years away and formed some 12 billion years ago. At about magnitude 5.1 and visible as a hazy glow through binoculars, it was the first globular to be discovered and is brighter than M13 in Hercules, the best globular in the northern sky.

Mars lies almost 15° east of Saturn at present and rises at Edinburgh’s south-eastern horizon at 02:46 on the 1st. As it more than doubles in brightness, from magnitude -0.4 to -1.2, it also speeds 12° eastwards from Sagittarius to Capricornus so that by the 31st it rises at 01:31 and its fiery glow is unmistakable above the south-south-eastern horizon before dawn.

Catch Mars below the Moon on the morning of the 6th. Telescopically, its disk swells from 11 to 15 arcseconds as its distance falls from 126 million to 92 million km. Its approach opens the optimum window for sending probes to the planet and NASA’s InSight lander to study “marsquakes” and the Martian interior is due for launch between 5 May and 8 June.

Meteors of the Eta-Aquarids shower, debris from Comet Halley, appear until the 20th as they radiate from a point that lies low in the east for an hour or so before dawn over Scotland. The shower peaks with some moonlight interference on the 6th and brings a fine shower for watchers further south but only a handful of meteors for us.

Diary for 2018 May

Times are BST

3rd            18h Venus 7° N of Aldebaran

4th            21h Moon 1.7° N of Saturn

5th – 6th  Peak of Eta Aquarids meteor shower

6th            08h Moon 2.7° N of Mars

8th            03h Last quarter

9th            02h Jupiter at opposition at distance of 658 million km

15th         13h New moon

17th         19h Moon 5° S of Venus

22nd         03h Moon 1.5° N of Regulus

22nd         05h First quarter

27th         19h Moon 4° N of Jupiter

29th         15h Full moon

Alan Pickup

This is a slightly revised version, with added diary, of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on April 30th 2018, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.

Scotland’s Sky in April, 2018

Impressive conjunction before dawn for Mars and Saturn

The maps show the sky at midnight BST on the 1st, 23:00 on the 16th and 22:00 on 30th. An arrow depicts the motion of Jupiter. (Click on map to enlarge)

The Sun climbs almost 10° northwards during April to bring us longer days and, let us hope, some decent spring-like weather at last. Our nights begin with Venus brilliant in the west and end with three other planets rather low across the south. Only Mercury is missing – after rounding the Sun’s near side on the 1st it remains hidden in Scotland’s morning twilight despite standing further from the Sun in the sky (27°) on the 29th than at any other time this year.

Edinburgh’s sunrise/sunset times change from 06:44/19:51 BST on the 1st to 05:32/20:50 on the 30th. The Moon is at last quarter on the 8th, new on the 16th, first quarter on the 22nd and full on the 30th.

Mars and Saturn rise together in the south-east at about 03:45 BST on the 1st and are closest on the following day, with Mars, just the brighter of the two, only 1.3° south of Saturn. Catch the impressive conjunction less than 10° high in the east-south-east as the morning twilight begins to brighten.

Both planets lie just above the so-called Teapot of Sagittarius but they are at very different distances – Mars at 166 million km on the 1st while Saturn is nine times further away at 1,492 million km.

Brightening slightly from magnitude 0.5 to 0.4 during April, Saturn moves little against the stars and is said to be stationary on the 18th when its motion reverses from easterly to westerly. Almost any telescope shows Saturn’s rings which are tipped at 26° to our view and currently span some 38 arcseconds around its 17 arcseconds disk.

Mars tracks 15° eastwards (to the left) and almost doubles in brightness from magnitude 0.3 to -0.3 as its distance falls to 127 million km. Its reddish disk swells from 8 to 11 arcseconds, large enough for telescopes to show some detail although its low altitude does not help.

Saturn is 4° below-left of Moon and 3° above-right of Mars on the 7th while the last quarter Moon lies 5° to the left of Mars on the next morning.

Orion stands above-right of Sirius in the south-west as darkness falls at present but has all but set in the west by our star map times. Those maps show the Plough directly overhead where it is stretched out of shape by the map projection used. We can extend a curving line along the Plough’s handle to reach the red giant star Arcturus in Bootes and carry it further to the blue giant Spica in Virgo, lower in the south-south-east and to the right of the Moon tomorrow night.

After Sirius, Arcturus is the second brightest star in Scotland’s night sky. Shining at magnitude 0.0 on the astronomers’ brightness scale, though, it is only one ninth as bright as the planet Jupiter, 40° below it in the constellation Libra. In fact, Jupiter improves from magnitude -2.4 to -2.5 this month as its distance falls from 692 million to 660 million km and is hard to miss after it rises in the east-south-east less than one hour before our map times. Look for it below-left of the Moon on the 2nd, right of the Moon on the 3rd, and even closer to the Moon a full lunation later on the 30th.

Jupiter moves 3° westwards to end the month 4° east of the double star Zubenelgenubi (use binoculars). Telescopes show the planet to be about 44 arcseconds wide, but for the sharpest view we should wait until it is highest (17°) in in the south for Edinburgh some four hours after the map times.

Venus’ altitude on the west at sunset improves from 16° to 21° this month as the evening star brightens from magnitude -3.9 to -4.2. Still towards the far side of its orbit, it appears as an almost-full disk, 11 arcseconds wide, with little or no shading across its dazzling cloud-tops. Against the stars, it tracks east-north-eastwards through Aries and into Taurus where it stands 6° below the Pleiades on the 20th and 4° left of the star cluster on the 26th. As it climbs into our evening sky, the earthlit Moon lies 6° below-left of Venus on the 17th and 12° left of the planet on the 18th.

The reason that we have such impressive springtime views of the young Moon is that the Sun’s path against the stars, the ecliptic, is tipped steeply in the west at nightfall as it climbs through Taurus into Gemini. The orbits of the Moon and the planets are only slightly inclined to the ecliptic so that any that happen to be towards this part of the solar system are also well clear of our horizon. Contrast this with our sky just before dawn at present, when the ecliptic lies relatively flat from the east to the south – hence the non-visibility of Mercury and the low altitudes of Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.

The evening tilt of the ecliptic means that, under minimal light pollution and after the Moon is out of the way, it may be possible to see the zodiacal light. This appears as a cone of light that slants up from the horizon through Venus and towards the Pleiades. Caused by sunlight reflecting from tiny particles, probably comet-dust, between the planets, it fades into a very dim zodiacal band that circles the sky. Directly opposite the Sun this intensifies into an oval glow, the gegenschein (German for “counterglow”), which is currently in Virgo and in the south at our map times – we need a really dark sky to see it though.

Diary for 2018 April

Times are BST.

1st    19h Mercury in inferior conjunction on Sun’s near side

2nd  13h Mars 1.3° S of Saturn

3rd   15h Moon 4° N of Jupiter

7th   14h Moon 1.9° N of Saturn

7th   19h Moon 3° N of Mars

8th   08h Last quarter

16th 03h New moon

17th 13h Saturn farthest from Sun (1,505,799,000 km)

17th 20h Moon 5° S of Venus

18th 03h Saturn stationary (motion reverses from E to W)

18th 15h Uranus in conjunction with Sun

22nd  23h First quarter

24th 05h Venus 4° S of Pleiades

24th 21h Moon 1.2° N of Regulus

29th 19h Mercury furthest W of Sun (27°)

30th 02h Full moon

30th 18h Moon 4° N of Jupiter

Alan Pickup

This is a slightly revised version, with added diary, of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on March 31st 2018, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.

Scotland’s Sky in March, 2018

Elusive Mercury is second evening star alongside Venus

The maps show the sky at 23.00 GMT on the 1st, 22.00 GMT on the 16th and 21.00 GMT (22.00 BST) on the 31st. Summer time begins at 01.00 GMT on the 25th when clocks go forward one hour to 02.00 BST. (Click on map to enlarge)

Orion is striding proudly across the meridian as darkness falls, but, even before the twilight dims, we have our best chances this year to spot Mercury low down in the west and close to the more familiar brilliant planet Venus.

Both evening stars lie within the same field-of-view in binoculars for much of March, so the fainter Mercury should be relatively easy to locate using Venus as a guide. Provided, of course, that we have an unobstructed horizon. Mercury never strays far from the Sun’s glare, making it the most elusive of the naked-eye planets – indeed, it is claimed that many astronomers, including Copernicus, never saw it.

Blazing at magnitude -3.9, Venus hovers only 9° above Edinburgh’s western horizon at sunset on the 1st and sets 64 minutes later. Mercury, one tenth as bright at magnitude -1.3, lies 2.0° (four Moon-breadths) below and to its right and may be glimpsed through binoculars as the twilight fades. Mercury stands 1.1° to the right of Venus on the 3rd and soon becomes a naked eye object as both planets stand higher from night to night, becoming visible until later in the darkening sky.

By the 15th, Mercury lies 4° above-right of Venus and at its maximum angle of 18° from the Sun, although it has more than halved in brightness to magnitude 0.2. The slender young Moon sits 5° below-left of Venus on the 18th and 11° above-left of the planetary pairing on the 19th. Earthshine, “the old Moon in the new Moon’s arms”, should be a striking sight over the following few evenings.

On the 22nd, the 30% illuminated Moon creeps through the V-shaped Hyades star cluster and hides (occults) Taurus’ leading star Aldebaran between 23:31 and 00:14 as they sink low into Edinburgh’s west-north-western sky.

Falling back towards the Sun, Mercury fades sharply to magnitude 1.4 by the 22nd when it passes 5° right of Venus and becomes lost from view during the following week. At the month’s end, Venus stands 15° high at sunset and sets two hours later.

The Sun climbs 12° northwards in March to cross the sky’s equator at the vernal equinox at 16:15 on the 20th, which is five days before we set our clocks forward at the start of British Summer Time. Sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh change from 07:04/17:47 GMT on the 1st to 06:46/19:49 BST (05:46/18:49 GMT) on the 31st. The Moon is full on the 2nd, at last quarter on the 9th, new on the 17th, at first quarter on the 24th and full again on the 31st.

Orion is sinking to our western horizon at our star map times while the Plough, the asterism formed by the brighter stars of Ursa Major, is soaring high in the east towards the zenith. To the south of Ursa Major, and just reaching our meridian, is Leo which is said to represent the Nemean lion strangled by Hercules (aka Heracles) in the first of his twelve labours. Leo appears to be facing west and squatting in a similar pose to that of the lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.

Leo’s Sickle, the reversed question mark that curls above Leo’s brightest star Regulus, outlines its head and mane and contains the famous double star Algieba whose two component stars, both much larger than our Sun, take more than 500 years to orbit each other and may be seen through a small telescope. Regulus, itself, is occulted as they sink towards Edinburgh’s western horizon at 06:02 on the morning of the 1st.

Jupiter, easily our brightest morning object, rises at Edinburgh’s east-south-eastern horizon at 00:47 GMT on the 1st and at 23:41 BST (22:41 GMT) on the 31st, climbing to pass around 17° high in the south some four hours later. Brightening from magnitude -2.2 to -2.4, it is slow moving in Libra, being stationary on the 9th when its motion reverses from easterly to westerly. Jupiter is obvious below the Moon on the 7th when a telescope shows the Jovian disk to be 40 arcseconds wide.

If we look below and to the left of Jupiter in the south before dawn, the three objects that catch our attention are the red supergiant star Antares in Scorpius and, further from Jupiter, the planets Mars and Saturn.

Mars lies in southern Ophiuchus, between Antares and Saturn, and is heading eastwards into Sagittarius and towards a conjunction with Saturn in early April. The angle between the two planets falls from 17° to only 1.5° this month as Mars brightens from magnitude 0.8 to 0.3 and its distance falls from 210 million to 166 million km. Mars’ disk swells from 6.7 to 8.4 arcseconds, becoming large enough for surface detail to be visible through decent telescopes. Sadly, Mars (like Saturn) is so far south and so low in Scotland’s sky that the “seeing” is unlikely to be crisp and sharp.

Incidentally, on the morning of the 19th Mars passes between two of the southern sky’s showpiece objects, being a Moon’s breadth below the Trifid Nebula and twice this distance above the Lagoon Nebula. Both glowing clouds of hydrogen, dust and young stars appear as hazy patches through binoculars but are stunning in photographs.

Saturn, creeping eastwards just above the Teapot of Sagittarius, improves from magnitude 0.6 to 0.5 and has a 16 arcseconds disk set within its superb rings which span 37 arcseconds at midmonth and have their northern face tipped towards us at 26°. The waning Moon lies above-left of Mars on the 10th and close to Saturn on the 11th.

Diary for 2018 March

Times are GMT until March 25, BST thereafter.

1st    06h Moon occults Regulus (disappears at 06:02 for Edinburgh)

2nd    01h Full moon

4th    14h Neptune in conjunction with Sun

5th    18h Mercury 1.4° N of Venus

7th    07h Moon 4° N of Jupiter

9th    10h Jupiter stationary (motion against stars reverses from E to W)

9th    11h Last quarter

10th   01h Moon 4° N of Mars

11th   02h Moon 2.2° N of Saturn

15th   15h Mercury furthest E of Sun (18°)

17th   13h New moon

18th   01h Mercury 4° N of Venus

18th   18h Moon 8° S of Mercury

18th   19h Moon 4° S of Venus

20th   16:15 Vernal equinox

23rd   00h Moon occults Aldebaran (23:31 to 00:14 for Edinburgh)

24th   16h First quarter

25th   01h Start of British Summer Time

27th   02h Moon 1.8° S of star cluster Praesepe in Cancer

31st   14h Full moon

Alan Pickup

This is a slightly revised version, with added diary, of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on February 28th 2018, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.

Scotland’s Sky in June, 2017

Saturn at its best as noctilucent clouds gleam

The maps show the sky at 01:00 BST on the 1st, midnight on the 16th and 23:00 on the 30th. (Click on map to enlarge)

The first day of June marks the start of our meteorological summer, though some would argue that summer begins on 21 June when (at 05:25 BST) the Sun reaches its most northerly point at the summer solstice.

Sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh vary surprisingly little from 04:35/21:47 BST on the 1st, to 04:26/22:03 at the solstice and 04:31/22:02 on the 30th. The Moon is at first quarter on the 1st, full on the 9th, at last quarter on the 17th and new on the 24th.

The Sun is already so far north that our nights remain bathed in twilight and it will be mid-July before Edinburgh sees its next (officially) dark and moonless sky. This is a pity, for the twilight swamps the fainter stars and, from northern Scotland, only the brightest stars and planets are in view.

If we travel south, though, the nights grow longer and darker, and the spectacular Milky Way star fields in Sagittarius and Scorpius climb higher in the south. From London at the solstice, for example, official darkness, with the Sun more than 12° below the horizon, lasts for three hours, while both Barcelona and Rome rejoice in more than six hours.

It is in this same area of sky, low in the south in the middle of the night, that we find the glorious ringed planet Saturn. This stands just below the full moon on the 9th and is at opposition, directly opposite the Sun, on the 15th when it is 1,353 million km away and shines at magnitude 0.0, comparable with the stars Arcturus in Bootes and Vega in Lyra. The latter shines high in the east-north-east at our map times and, together with Altair in Aquila and Deneb in Cygnus, forms the Summer Triangle which is a familiar feature of our nights until late-autumn.

Viewed telescopically, Saturn’s globe appears 18 arcseconds wide at opposition while its rings have their north face tipped 27° towards us and span 41 arcseconds. Sadly, Saturn’s low altitude, no more than 12° for Edinburgh, means that we miss the sharpest views although it should still be possible to spy the inky arc of the Cassini division which separates the outermost of the obvious rings, the A ring, from its neighbouring and brighter B ring.

Other gaps in the rings may be hard to spot from our latitudes – we can only envy the view for observers in the southern hemisphere who have Saturn near the zenith in the middle of their winter’s night. For us, Saturn is less than a Moon’s breadth further south over our next two summers, while the ring-tilt begins to decrease again.

On the other hand, we can sympathize with those southern observers for most of them never see noctilucent clouds, a phenomenon for which we in Scotland are ideally placed. Formed by ice condensing on dust motes, their intricate cirrus-like patterns float at about 82 km, high enough to shine with an electric-blue or pearly hue as they reflect the sunlight after any run-of-the-mill clouds are in darkness. Because of the geometry involving the Sun’s position below our horizon, they are often best seen low in the north-north-west an hour to two after sunset, shifting towards the north-north-east before dawn – along roughly the path taken by the bright star Capella in Auriga during the night.

Jupiter dims slightly from magnitude -2.2 to -2.0 but (after the Moon) remains the most conspicuous object in the sky for most of the night. Indeed, the Moon lies close to the planet on the 3rd – 4th and again on the 30th. As the sky darkens at present, it stands some 30° high and just to the west of the meridian, though by the month’s end it is only half as high and well over in the SW. Our star maps plot it in the west-south-west as it sinks closer to the western horizon where it sets two hours later.

The giant planet is slow-moving in Virgo, about 11° above-right of the star Spica and 3° below-left of the double star Porrima. As its distance grows from 724 million to 789 million km, its disk shrinks from 41 to 37 arcseconds in diameter but remains a favourite target for observers.

The early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter were released on 25 May. They reveal the atmosphere to be even more turbulent than was thought, with the polar regions peppered by 1,000 km-wide cyclones that are apparently jostling together chaotically. This is in stark contrast to the meteorology at lower latitudes, where organized parallel bands of cloud dominate in our telescopic views. In addition, the planet’s magnetic field is stronger and more lumpy than was expected. Juno last skimmed 3,500 km above the Jovian clouds on 19 May and is continuing to make close passes every 53 days.

Both Mars and Mercury are hidden in the Sun’s glare this month, the latter reaching superior conjunction on the Sun’s far side on the 21st.

Venus, brilliant at magnitude -4.3 to -4.1, is low above our eastern horizon before dawn. It stands at its furthest west of the Sun in the sky, 46°, on 3 June but it rises only 78 minutes before the Sun and stands 10° high at sunrise as seen from Edinburgh. By the 30th, it climbs to 16° high at sunrise, having risen more than two hours earlier. Between these days, it shrinks in diameter from 24 to 18 arcseconds and changes in phase from 49% to 62% illuminated. It lies left of the waning crescent Moon on the 20th and above the Moon on the following morning.

Alan Pickup

This is a slightly-revised version of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on May 31st 2017, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.

Scotland’s Sky in April, 2017

Jupiter rules our April nights

The maps show the sky at midnight BST on the 1st, 23:00 on the 16th and 22:00 on 30th. An arrow shows the motion of Mars during the final week of the month. (Click on map to enlarge)

Venus dominated our evening sky for the first quarter of 2017, but it is now Jupiter’s turn in the spotlight. The conspicuous giant planet lies directly opposite the Sun in the sky on the 7th so that it rises in the east at sunset, reaches its highest point in the south in the middle of the night and sets in the west at sunrise.

Our charts show it in Virgo to the east of south as Taurus and Orion dip beneath the western horizon and the Plough looms overhead, stretched out of its familiar shape by our map projection. Regulus in Leo is in the south-west and almost level with Arcturus in Bootes in the south-east. Vega in Lyra and Deneb in Cygnus are beginning their climb in the north-east.

Sunrise/sunset times for Edinburgh change from 06:43/19:51 BST on the 1st to 05:31/20:50 on the 30th. The Moon is at first quarter on the 3rd, full on the 11th, at last quarter on the 19th and new on the 26th.

Venus rises only a little more than one hour before sunrise and, though brilliant at magnitude -4.2, may be difficult to spot low in the east before dawn. However, the other inner planet, Mercury, remains nicely placed in the evening and stands furthest east of the Sun (19°) on the 1st.

Thirty minutes after Edinburgh’s sunset on that day, Mercury is 12° high in the west and shines at magnitude 0.0. It should be possible to spy it through binoculars and eventually with the unaided eye as the twilight fades and the planet sinks to set another 96 minutes later. By the 8th, though, it is a couple of degrees lower and a quarter as bright at magnitude 1.6 as it is engulfed by the twilight. Inferior conjunction on the Sun’s near side occurs on the 20th.

Mars, magnitude 1.5 to 1.6 and above and to Mercury’s left at present, tracks east-north-eastwards this month to pass 5° below the Pleiades on the 15th and a similar distance left of the star cluster on the 26th. By then it sets late enough to be plotted near our north-western horizon at the star map times.

Its opposition means that Jupiter is at its brightest and closest, shining more brightly than any star at magnitude -2.5 and a distance of 666 million km. It lies 6° north-west (above-right) of Virgo’s leading star Spica as the month begins and tracks 3.7° westwards during April to pass 10 arcminutes or a third of a Moon’s-width south of the fourth magnitude star Theta Virginis on the 5th.

Jupiter lies close to the full Moon on the night of the 10th-11th when the Jovian disk appears 44 arcseconds wide if viewed telescopically, one fortieth as wide as the Moon.

Jupiter’s clouds are arrayed in bands that lie parallel to its equator, the dark ones called belts and the intervening lighter hued ones called zones. There are numerous whirls and spots, the most famous being the Great Red Spot in the southern hemisphere. The planet spins in under ten hours, so a resolute observer might view the entire span of its clouds in a single April night. The four main moons, visible through decent binoculars and easy through a telescope, lie on each side of the disk and change their configuration from night to night.

The beautiful planet Saturn rises in the south-east less than three hours after our map times and is the brightest object (magnitude 0.4 to 0.3) less than 15° above Edinburgh’s southern horizon before dawn. It is a shame that its low altitude means that we miss the sharpest and most impressive views of it rings which span 39 arcseconds in mid-April, and are tilted at 26° around its 17 arcseconds disk. After appearing stationary on the 6th, Saturn begins to creep westwards against the stars of Sagittarius – look for it below and left of the Moon on the 16th and right of the Moon on the 17th.

It is not often that I advertise the annual Lyrids meteor shower. As one of the year’s lesser displays, it yields only some 18 meteors per hour at best, all of them swift and some leaving glowing trains in their wake as they diverge from a radiant point to the right of Vega. The event lasts from the 18th to the 25th and peaks on the 22nd when moonlight should not interfere unduly this year. The Lyrid meteoroids were released by Comet Thatcher, last seen in 1861.

Bright comets have been rare of late, but fainter ones are observed frequently. One such has the jaunty name of comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák and takes 5.4 years to orbit between the paths of Jupiter and the Earth. It passes within 21 million km of us on the 1st as it nears perihelion, its closest point to the Sun, on the 12th. I glimpsed it through binoculars from a superb dark-sky site at Kielder Forrest, Northumberland, last week when it was a diffuse seventh magnitude smudge close to Merak, the southern star of the Pointers in the Plough.

Although its path is not depicted on our chart, the comet is poised to sweep close to three of the stars identified in Draco, between the Plough and Polaris, the Pole Star. It passes 0.6° north of Thuban on the night of the 2nd-3rd, 1.5° south-west of Eta on the 11th (sadly, in full moonlight) and 0.6° west of Beta on the 18th-19th. During past perihelia, it has been seen to flare by several magnitudes for a few days at a time, so, if we are lucky, it may reach naked-eye visibility.

Alan Pickup

This is a slightly-revised version of Alan’s article published in The Scotsman on March 31st 2017, with thanks to the newspaper for permission to republish here.