The Night Sky This Month

Northern HemisphereIan Morison tells us what we can see in the Northern Hemisphere night sky during April 2019.The PlanetsJupiter starts the month rising around 1 a.m. and brightens from magnitude -2.3 to -2.5 as the month progresses, whilst its angular size increases slightly from 40 to 43 arc seconds. By month's end it rises by ~11 pm so will be due south around 3 am. Sadly it is heading towards the southern part of the ecliptic and currently lies in the southern part of Ophiuchus just above Scorpius so, as it crosses the meridian, it will only have an elevation of ~ 14 degrees. Atmospheric dispersion will thus take its toll and an atmospheric dispersion corrector would greatly help to improve our views of the giant planet. Saturn, shining with a magnitude increasing from +0.6 to +0.5 during the month, rises around 3 am on April 1st but around 1 am by month's end. Its disk is ~17 arc seconds across and its rings - which are still nicely tilted from the line of sight spanning 36 arc seconds across. By the en