Skylights: April 2026

April nights deliver many distinct seasonal changes. Later sunsets and smaller portions of darkness give us fewer hours to enjoy the sky. The sparkling winter constellations are quickly departing into those later hours of twilight, and nocturnal wildlife is coming back after a long winter slumber, as a chorus of spring peepers and wood frogs engage an additional sense, adding a pleasant dimension to the warmer nights of spring.

Sun

We typically say that Earth’s distance is 1 astronomical unit (au) from the Sun, but due to its elliptical orbit, it doesn’t retain the same distance to the Sun over the course of the year. Earth’s orbit has a semimajor axis of 1 au, and the planet spends part of the orbit closer than 1 au to the Sun, and part of it farther away. This means that there are two points along its orbit where it is exactly 1 au from the Sun. One of those times is on April 4. From that time until aphelion, on July 5, we’re moving. We’ll be inside of 1 au again on October 5.

April 8 is the first day with at least 13 hours of daylight. Daylight remains longer than 13 hours through September 3.

The Equation of Time is 0 on the 15th. The Sun will now be “fast” until June 13, peaking at three minutes 40 seconds on May 14.

After a 37-day trek through Pisces, the Sun enters Aries late on the 18th, where it will spend the next 25½ days.

The first sunrise during DST before 6:00am is on the 19th. Sunrises will continue to be earlier than 6:00am through August 8.

Moon

The full Pink Moon occurs at 10:12pm on the 1st, in Virgo. It rises at 7:05pm, six minutes before sunset. Transiting at 15:50am on the 2nd, it reaches an elevation of 39.3°, and sets at 6:24am, three minutes before sunrise.

At Moonrise on the following evening, the 2nd, the 98.8% waning gibbous Moon is just 1.8° south of Spica.

Just before 1:00am on the 6th, the 84.1% waning gibbous Moon passes 0.1° south of magnitude 2.90 π Scorpii.

At 1:00am on the 7th, just after Moonrise, the 76.3% waning gibbous is 5.0° east-southeast of Antares.

The 76.3% waning Moon rises 5.0° east of Antares, in Scorpius, on the morning of the 7th. On the 8th, it  passes directly in front of the galactic center, in Sagittarius.

The Moon is last quarter at 12:51am on the 10th, in Sagittarius. The next morning, the 11th, just before the onset of twilight, the 38.5% waning crescent Moon is just 0.3° northwest of Pluto.

On the 15th, the 5.8% waning crescent Moon is 4.0° northwest of Mercury and 6.5° west of Mars.

The Moon is new at 7:52am on the 17th, marking the beginning of Lunation 1278. Just twelve hours later, try to spot the very young 0.4% illuminated crescent, setting 38 minutes after sunset. The 3.3% crescent is much easier to observe on the following evening, when it is 5.9° northwest of Venus.

This month’s pairing of the Moon and the Pleiades isn’t an exceptionally close one, but is no less spectacular to watch, as the 9.3% Earthshine-adorned crescent is 4.0° to the east-northeast of the cluster on the 19th. With brilliant Venus nearby, as well as Aldebaran and the other bright cluster of Taurus, the Hyades, 10.0° to the south-southeast, this celestial grouping shouldn’t be missed. 

An intriguing phenomenon to note during this time of year is how late the waxing crescent Moon remains visible in the sky. This is due to the Moon being near its most northerly position when it is going through this phase, and its elongation angle from the Sun being nearly perpendicular to the north-northwestern horizon. On the 20th-21st, the 18.2% crescent Moon sets just after midnight. As it continues towards first quarter, its setting times on the following nights are 1:07am (28.7%), 1:55am (40.0%), and the first quarter Moon, just after 2:30am on the 24th.

It is also worth noting how the sunlit portion of the Moon points almost directly downward towards the horizon, with the cusps appearing as close to horizontal. This effect is most pronounced on the 18th, when the thin crescent lies close to Venus. 

On the 22nd, the Moon is 2.8° north-northeast of Jupiter. The pair should be visible in the same field of view of a rich field telescope, presenting the opportunity to observe five solar system objects in one view: the Moon, Jupiter, and the giant planet’s Galilean moons Io, Ganymede, and Callisto. Europa is in Jupiter’s shadow.

First quarter Moon is at 10:32pm on the 23rd, in Cancer. Notice how late the Moon sets at about 2:30am on the 24th, due to the Moon being near its most northerly position when it is going through this phase, and its elongation angle from the Sun being nearly perpendicular to the north-northwestern horizon. Just before it sets, look for the open cluster M44 2.5° east-southeast of the Moon.

The Moon is quite close to Regulus on the 25th, coming to about 3 arcminutes of the brightest star in Leo at 9:15pm. Observers just south of us will see an occultation.

Mercury

Mercury is in the morning sky, reaching its greatest elongation of 27.8° on the 3rd. A day later, it is at aphelion, its most distant point in its orbit from the Sun, at 0.467 au. As a result, this is close to the maximum possible elongation angle Mercury can attain. However, due to the shallow ecliptic angle with respect to the eastern horizon during this time of year, this generous elongation angle will not be advantageous to mid-northern latitude observers. Mercury rises only about an hour before sunrise.

Mercury at greatest elongation shows a 50% illuminated “half-Moon” phase, and in the weeks that follow will show a widening gibbous phase on its ever-shrinking disk as the planet moves away from Earth towards its next superior conjunction in mid-May.

Mercury joins a party of planets in the non-zodiacal constellation Cetus on the 20th, when three of the solar system’s classical five planets all appear in a line 1.7° in length, with Mars at the northern end and Saturn at the southern end. A small telescope with medium magnification looking just over the eastern horizon 30 minutes before sunrise should reveal them fairly easily.

By month’s end, Mercury's elongation angle is only about half of what it was at its maximum during the beginning of April; however, we see it rising at its earliest time for this apparition, at 5:16am on the 30th.

Venus

Because Venus is the brightest starlike object in the night sky, it is often referred to as the “Evening Star” when it is visible in the west after sunset. At magnitude -3.9, it is visible for one hour 45 minutes after sundown early in the month, and almost two and one half hours at the end of April.

The brilliant planet spends the first 18 days of April moving through Aries, before entering Taurus on the 19th. With a telescope, Venus undergoes only slight apparent changes during April, as its disk grows from 10.6 to 11.3 arcseconds while its illuminated fraction decreases from 93% to 90%. The biggest change we will notice can be observed with the unaided eye, as its position moves east-northeastward at a swift 1.2° per day.

 During the final week of April. Venus is located within the same binocular field not only with the Pleiades cluster, but also our seventh planet Uranus. The two planets appear closest on the 23rd, when Uranus is 0.8° to the southwest (in the opposite direction of the Pleiades) from Venus. Although they appear close in our sky, Uranus is nearly 14 times more distant than Venus, its light taking nearly three hours to reach us, compared to just 12 minutes from Venus. They differ in brightness by a factor of over 7,500.

On the 26th, Venus lies between the two bright clusters of Taurus, the Pleiades and the Hyades.

During the closing days of April, Venus contorts the familiar pattern of the Winter Hexagon asterism. It lies along the line through Sirius and Aldebaran on the 28th, and two days later it forms a parallelogram with Sirus, Procyon, and Capella.

Mars

Mars rises during nautical twilight, less than an hour before sunrise throughout April. It crosses into Pisces on the 2nd.

The 13th presents an opportunity to welcome back Neptune, as the Red Planet and our most distant planet will be just 0.3° apart that morning. The pair can be found 5.4° to the left of Mercury, and a large telescope with higher magnification will be needed to pull the magnitude 7.8 distant blue ice giant into view.

The Red Planet enters Cetus on the 18th, and joins Saturn and Mercury within the celestial whale on the 20th.

Mars enters Pisces on the 21st, and rises about 45 minutes before sunrise. It is 3.1° to the left (northeast) of Saturn on the 23rd.

Through a telescope, Mars shows a tiny, nearly fully-illuminated globe just over four arcseconds across.

Jupiter

Jupiter, still within Gemini, is high in the south at sundown early in April. After the Moon and Venus, it will be the first object to become visible in twilight. The giant planet reaches eastern quadrature, 90° heliocentric longitude east of the Sun, on the 5th. This geometry also results in it being at its minimum illumination (phase) angle of 99.1°. This doesn’t sound like much, but it is apparent under high magnification under steady seeing conditions as slight limb darkening on the planet’s western edge. The effect is more pronounced in images captured of Jupiter.

You may notice that Jupiter is noticeably west of the meridian after dusk, and it will be losing elevation rapidly over the next few weeks as its resident winter constellation is departing the evening sky with increasingly later sunsets and twilight. 

On the 25th, the 38.2% crescent Moon is 2.8° north-northeast of the planet.

Saturn

Saturn, on the other side of its orbit from Earth, is positioned too close to the Sun to be easily observed during the beginning of April. It remains visible only during twilight until late May.

The ringed planet moves into Cetus on the 9th, and is visible with binoculars or a telescope when it lies between Mercury and Mars on the 20th.

Uranus

Uranus remains easy to locate in Taurus, just 4.3° south of the Pleiades cluster. With binoculars or a telescope, use its position relative to 14 Tauri to track its daily motion, 3.0 arcminutes  east-northeastward. On the first, it makes a perfect line with 13 and 14 Tauri, positioned just 16.0 arcminutes from the latter. By the end of April, it will have moved to a distance of 1.7° east of the 6th magnitude star. 

Venus joins Uranus on the 23rd, with the two planets being just 0.75° apart.

Get one last look of Uranus at the end of April, as it sets before the end of astronomical twilight on the 28th, marking the end of observing season for our seventh planet. It returns to the morning sky in late June.

Neptune

Neptune is low in the east before sunrise. It will remain difficult to observe until late May, when it begins to rise before the onset of twilight.

Dwarf Planets

Ceres

Ceres is getting lower in the southwest in the early evenings. From the first week of April, it is no longer visible outside of astronomical twilight, making observing the magnitude 9.0 dwarf planet challenging, but you can use Venus to find it on the 5th, when the bright planet is 4.3° to its north. Ceres returns to observable darkness during the morning again in late July.

Pluto

Pluto, in Capricornus, is low in the southeast before morning twilight.

Pluto is at quadrature (elongated 90° from the Sun) on the 25th, and rises just before 3:00am. It is in Capricornus, 3.6° northwest of psi Capricorni. shining at a dim 14.6 magnitude from a distance of over 35.5 au. Along Pluto’s eccentric 248-year orbit, it hasn’t been this far from us since 1953.

Haumea

Dwarf planet Haumea is at opposition on the 20th in Boötes. From a distance of 48.913 au, it shines at magnitude 17.5, well within range of most amateur astroimaging rigs, but likely just beyond the limit of the smaller smart scopes such as the Seestar.

It is located 0.9° north-northeast of magnitude 4.5 zeta Boötis, and about ⅓ the distance between zeta and magnitude 4.9 pi Boötis. It is moving west-northwestward about one arcminute per day.

Besides having a pair of moons and a ring, Haumea is shaped like a river rock, a flattened spheroid about twice as wide as it is across its poles. Its largest dimension is about 2,000 kilometers, making it approximately ⅔ the size of Pluto.

Minor Planets

Francinejackson

15022 Francinejackson is at opposition in Virgo on the 6th at a distance of 1.412 au. It is located 7.8° west-northwest of Spica, and 2.5° north-northeast of the magnitude 4.8 star psi Virginis, making close to a right angle with the two stars. The magnitude 18.4 asteroid is moving west-northwestward at 15 arcminutes per day.

On April 16, shrinking at magnitude 18.8 in Virgo, 15022 Francinejackson passes 0.2° north of Caldwell 52 (NGC 4697), a massive elliptical galaxy that lies over 38 million light years away with a magnitude 10.8 glow. Francinejackson continues to move 14 arcminutes per day towards the west-northwest.

Comets

C/2026 A1 MAPS, a sungrazing comet discovered on January 13, 2026 by the MAPS program (named for the astronomers who conduct it: Maury, Attard, Parrott, and Signoret) using the AMACS1 11-inch Schmidt telescope at Atacama in Chile, is racing towards the Sun in early April, and has the potential to be a memorable sight in our early spring sky.

This comet’s best prospects for observing are likely to be in the early evening sky during the waning days of March, when it will be a few degrees below and to the left of Venus.

The comet reaches perihelion at 10:00 EDT on the 4th, at a distance of just 0.0057 au, which is closer to the surface of the Sun than the distance between Earth and the Moon. At this distance, it will be moving at a staggering 557.3 kilometers per second – a spacecraft traveling at this speed could take us to the Moon in just 22 minutes.

Due to the comet’s extremely eccentric orbit (e=0.999962498752744) and its very close perihelion distance, its post-perihelion trajectory is a near complete reversal back towards the direction it approached from. 

In the unlikely event that it survives perihelion, C/2026 A1 or its remnants may become visible in our evening sky on the 6th. Start observing 30 minutes after sunset, and look directly below Venus. The comet is positioned 4° farther east (about 45° relative to the horizon) the next night, and an additional 3.5° east the night after.

The comet is closest to Earth at about 7:00pm on the 5th, at 0.9609 au.

There have been some outlandish predictions on how bright this comet could get. We’ve heard these prospects for “great” comets before, most of which never pan out. The only thing about visible comets that we can be certain about is that they are often unpredictable, but keep watching for C/2026 A1 MAPS, as it has the potential to be a memorable sight for a brief time in early April

C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS

Another comet that will become visible later in April is C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS, discovered on September 8, 2025 with the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Haleakala on its inbound trip from the Oort Cloud.

Comet PanSTARRS will be well-placed in our morning sky, and could approach naked-eye visibility, or at the very least, bright enough to be seen with binoculars. From the third week of April, it traverses eastward through the southern third of the Great Square asterism in Pegasus, over the eastern horizon before morning twilight.

The comet reaches its perihelion distance of 0.499 au on April 19, when it will be visible near Algenib (gamma Pegasi), in the morning sky before sunrise. It will remain visible over the next few days as it moves closer to the Sun from our perspective, but lower over the horizon and in deeper twilight. Its tail will be oriented nearly perpendicular to the horizon, making prospects for observation quite favorable.

Once it passes conjunction on April 25 and moves into the western sky, it becomes very difficult to observe as it remains low and moves virtually parallel to our western horizon each night after sunset. The comet is closest to Earth on April 26, at a distance of 0.489 au.

Meteors

The annual Lyrids meteor shower peaks on the 21st. Observers in a dark site can expect to see as many as 18 meteors per hour, but since the maximum is expected to occur during daylight hours Eastern Time, the best show could be either the 20th-21st or the 21st-22nd. The crescent Moon will be out of view, providing no interference for observing these remnants of comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher), originating from a point about 8° southwest of Vega, which is actually within the constellation boundary of Hercules, rather than its namesake Lyra.

Stars & Beyond

As the stars of winter set into the western horizon, the constellations of spring take center stage. Ursa Major is in its most prominent position high overhead, and the brilliant beacon of springtime, Arcturus, is now visible in the east-northeast before twilight fades.

Observers awaiting the once-per-four-score-year outburst of the Blaze Star, T Coronae Borealis will find it above the horizon during all hours of darkness throughout April, and transiting after 2:00am.

During the late evening hours, the spring constellations Leo, Virgo, Coma Berenices, and Corvus are positioned high in the south, awaiting telescopic observation.

For this month’s deep-sky destination, we’ll travel to a place so far away, the light you’ll see left its source when Earth was less than half its present age, during the Siderian, the earliest period of the Paleoproterozoic era, when multicellular life was just beginning to sprout.

Classified as a quasar (an abbreviation for quasi-stellar radio source), which is a highly energetic active galactic nucleus (AGN), 3C 273 was first identified as a bright radio source and cataloged in the Third Cambridge Catalog (3C) of Radio Sources. Its true nature would be revealed in 1963 when astronomers, after having pinpointed its precise location by means of timing lunar occultations of the radio source, scrutinized its optical counterpart, and realized that it was a very large and powerful extragalactic object – its staggering distance first determined by its redshift of z=0.158.

At a distance of 2.4 billion light years, 1,000 times the distance to the Andromeda Galaxy, 3C 273 appears as nothing more than a 13th magnitude star, making it the most distant nontransient object visible with telescopes as small as eight inches. 3C 273 can shine as bright as magnitude 12.9, but it is known to be variable. In early 2026, it has been reported to be hovering around magnitude 13.2.

3C 273 is the brightest quasar in our sky, and in order for it to shine so brightly from such a great distance, it must have an enormous intrinsic brightness – 4 trillion suns. With an absolute magnitude of -26.7, it would be as bright as the Sun in our sky if it were placed at a distance of 10 parsec (32.6 light years).

The quasar’s light, which comprises not just visible light, but also radio, x-rays, and gamma rays, originates from super-heated matter within the tightly wound accretion disk orbiting its central black hole containing 900 million times the mass of the Sun. This lies within a massive type E4 elliptical galaxy, which is nearly invisible with amateur telescopes and imaging systems. 

Located just two degrees north of the celestial equator in Virgo, navigating to 3C 273 takes a bit of effort if you’re not using setting circles to go to its exact coordinates (J2000 RA: 12h 29’ 06.7”;  Dec: +02° 03’ 08.6”), as the area it is located in is devoid of any bright or notable landmarks.

Begin at magnitude 3.5 Porrima (gamma Virginis), and move north-northwest 3.3° to find magnitude 5.7 FW Virginis. a class M3 variable star that will appear reddish. Move almost due east, and 3C 273 will be about ¾ of the distance between FW and HD 108228, a 7.3 magnitude star that is also 3.1° north-northeast of Zaniah (eta Virginis). The quasar is 0.8° due east of HD 108228. Along the way, you may stumble across NGC 4536, an 11th magnitude spiral galaxy that lies at a distance of 49 million light years, quite distant, but still only about 2% of the distance to 3C 273.

A detailed star chart depicting the coordinates of 3C 273 using the Gaia database is useful for pinpointing its location, as most atlases and planetarium applications do not go deep enough to determine which 13th magnitude object in your field is our target.

After you take a moment to absorb some of its ancient photons, consider a return visit in a month or two, and again next year, to observe how its brightness changes over time.

For an observing challenge, users of large, long focal length telescopes may attempt to capture 3C 273’s 20 arcsecond jet, which extends towards the southwest of the quasar.

Lastly, a journey into the deep sky during this time of year may be completed by moving 14° to the south, to one of the brightest and more beautiful galaxies visible, M104, the Sombrero galaxy. This lenticular galaxy has a nearly perfect symmetrical form, with a bright nucleus surrounded by a prominent dust ring that is visible in telescopes as small as three inches.