In this video, I discuss the objects you can see with your naked eyes and binoculars in this spring’s sky. The season offers several bright planets, notable constellations, and bright deep-sky objects. You can locate all the night-sky sights I talk about with Astronomy.com's interactive star chart StarDome.
Watch the video, "Observe easy-to-find objects in the spring sky."
Venus
As darkness falls during the first half of March, your eyes will be drawn to the western sky. In the deepening twilight, Venus gleams like nothing else. You won’t have any trouble identifying the brilliant planet, which glows brighter than any other point of light in the sky. Venus passes between the Sun and Earth in late March, and will reappear in the east before dawn by mid-April.
Saturn
Beautiful Saturn also lies in the evening sky, although it doesn’t stand out like Venus. Look for Saturn among the background stars of Leo the Lion, where it glows as bright as that constellation’s brightest star, Regulus. Saturn will remain in the evening sky until late summer.
Mercury
Elusive Mercury puts on its best evening show of the year in the last 10 days of April. Watch for a bright point of light low in the west-northwest 30 to 45 minutes after the Sun sets. The easiest evening to spot it will be April 26, when it lies directly below a crescent Moon.
Jupiter
Meanwhile, Jupiter appears conspicuous in the morning sky during April and May. Look for it in the southeast around the time twilight starts to paint the sky. Only the planet Venus shines brighter than Jupiter.
The Big Dipper
Spring’s starry background has its own charm. Those of us in the Northern Hemisphere have a signpost in the spring sky: the bright asterism of the Big Dipper. Seven bright stars in the constellation Ursa Major the Great Bear create the Dipper’s shape. On spring evenings, the Dipper stands nearly overhead, at the center of this star chart.
Use the two stars at the end of the Dipper’s bowl, called the Pointers, to lead you to the North Star, Polaris. Extend the line between the Pointers (which lie at the bottom left of this photo), and extend it about five times that distance. Polaris is the brightest star in the Little Dipper and forms the tip of its handle.
Head back to the Big Dipper and take a close look at the middle star in the handle, called Mizar. If you have decent eyesight, you should see a fainter companion star just to its east. If you can’t see it, turn your binoculars on this star and its double nature will stand out.
Now, let’s use the Big Dipper to find some of spring’s other celestial delights.
If you follow the arc of the Dipper’s handle away from the bowl, you’ll soon arrive at Arcturus — the brightest star in the spring sky. Continue the arc about an equal distance and you’ll find Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo. Spica dominates this sprawling constellation, and has the distinction of being the bluest of all 1st-magnitude stars. When it comes to stars, blue means hot, and Spica’s surface blazes at a temperature nearly four times hotter than the Sun.
Next, head back to the Big Dipper, and imagine poking a hole in the bottom of its bowl. The water would flow out and fall on the back of Leo the Lion. Leo consists of two distinctive sections: A group of six stars on the right that looks like a backward question mark, and three stars on the left that form a right triangle. Remember that Saturn augments the Lion’s shape this year, just below the pattern seen here.
Our final stop in the spring sky lies one constellation west of Leo, in the faint group known as Cancer the Crab. Smack in the middle of this constellation lies perhaps the spring sky’s finest binocular target: the Beehive star cluster (M44). On exceptionally clear nights from a dark site, you might spot the Beehive with your naked eyes. Binoculars reveal the cluster’s true nature. Through 10x50 binoculars, you should be able to see at least two dozen stars packed into a circle some three times wider than the Full Moon. It’s a sight you won’t soon forget.
We’ve created two more videos like this one to help you enjoy everything the springtime sky has to offer.
Astronomy magazine Senior Editor Michael Bakich’s video “Springtime observing for small telescopes” highlights this year’s best springtime targets you can see with a 4-inch or smaller telescope.
Astronomy magazine Editor Dave Eicher’s video “Springtime observing for large telescopes, 2009” highlights this year’s best springtime deep-sky objects you can see with an 8-inch or larger telescope. Both of these videos are available for Astronomy magazine subscribers at Astronomy.com/videos.
I’ll be back again this summer to talk about what’s on view during the warmest nights of the year.