The Planetarium Lady

Tonight, April’s full Pink Moon will rise in the east around sunset, and – if all goes to plan – the Artemis 2 spacecraft will launch 4 astronauts on their way to the moon.

On equinox night tonight, watch for the moon and Venus floating in the western sky after sunset. an equinox is a crossing. It’s when the sun crosses the celestial equator, moving from south to north. DID YOU KNOW: The fastest sunsets and sunrises of the year happen at the equinoxes. I’m talking about the length of time it takes for the whole sun to rise or sink below the horizon.

We had a wonderful time connecting the first grade curriculum to patterns in our sky! The first graders learned about the circumpolar constellations, saw that the Sun affects how we see the moon and learned that it’s the blue sky that blocks our window into space during the day! It was great sharing the planetarium with you. Hiawatha!!

It’s Friday the 13th! Not only that, but it’s the first of this year’s Friday the 13th trilogy; we’ll also have a Friday the 13th in March and November!

TONIGHT: the full Snow Moon Fun fact about full moons: At full moon, the sun, Earth, and moon are aligned in space, with Earth in the middle. The moon’s day side - its fully lighted hemisphere - faces us. A full moon always lies opposite the sun in our sky. And on the night of full moon, the moon and sun act as if they’re on opposite ends of a seesaw: the sun goes down, and the moon comes up!

Earth’s orbit takes us between Jupiter and the sun tomorrow, placing Jupiter opposite the sun in our sky. Jupiter is rising in the east as the sun sets in the west, shining at its highest point in the sky around midnight, when the sun is below your feet. Astronomers call this an opposition of Jupiter.