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April 22: The Lyrid meteor shower peaks
Bright Venus acts as an easy stepping-stone to reach the much fainter and more distant ice giant Uranus this evening. If you haven’t seen the latter planet before, tonight is a great night to catch your first glimpse. Uranus is just 45’ due south of magnitude –3.9 Venus, meaning you can catch both together in binoculars or a telescope eyepiece.
Centering Venus should be a snap. Earth’s sister planet is the brightest point of light in the western sky after dark, located to the lower left of the Pleiades star cluster. Through a telescope, Venus’ bright disk appears 11” wide and 90 percent lit. Less than a degree to its south (lower left) is Uranus. Glowing a faint magnitude 5.8, this planet is so far from Earth that its disk spans only 3”, despite being physically much larger than Venus. The far-off world will look like a dim, “flat” star, but through your optics you may be able to identify that its disk is indeed circular, rather than a pinprick of light like a faint star.
If you aren’t able to observe the pair tonight, try again tomorrow: Venus will pass due north of Uranus early tomorrow morning and will still be less than 1.5° from Uranus after sunset. On the 24th, bright Venus will appear above (northeast of) Uranus in the evening sky.
Sunrise: 6:10 A.M.
Sunset: 7:47 P.M.
Moonrise: 11:31 A.M.
Moonset: 2:07 A.M.
Moon Phase: First Quarter
*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40° N 90° W. The Moon’s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.
