April 2026 Stargazing Guide

Greetings junior scientists, scientists, and citizens of this great big weird, wild, and wonderful world in which we live. As always,I'm your humble science communicator, the great Orbax, coming to you from the Department of Physics here at the University of Guelph and I'd like to welcome you to our April 2026 Star Gazing Guide.

Welcome in to our first full month of spring. We've left our winter nights behind us as the days just keep getting longer with sunrise moving back from 7:02 a.m. on April 1st to 6:14 a.m. on April 30th and sunset going from 7:47 p.m. on the 1st to 8:22 p.m. on the 30th. That means that by month's end we'll have less than 10 hours of dark skies.

So, how do we make the most of it?

This month we've got morning planets,
celebrate some astral holidays,
and try to spot a meteor or two.

All this and more when you just take some time to look up.

Venus and Jupiter join us in the evenings this month, shining bright in the west and setting a few hours after sunset.
Saturn returns to our skies April 12th and will just be visible in the east as the Sun starts rising, making it difficult to spot.
But on April 20th, if you're lucky, right around 6:00 a.m. you should be able to spot Mercury, Mars, and Saturn aligning due east just above the horizon for a few minutes before the Sun rises.
Good luck, junior scientists.

This month, we celebrate some big days for the astro-community.
On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin completed a one-orbit flight in the Vostok1 spacecraft, making him the first human being to ever travel in space.
This tremendous achievement is what pushed President Kennedy to announce that American astronauts would set foot on the Moon by 1970.

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard.

Which they did!
In July of 1969!
April 12th is now known as the International Day of Human Space Flight as a tribute to all that humanity has and will achieve.
With its early sunsets and late sunrises, April's the perfect month to get away from the city lights and find a dark patch of sky and look up.
April 13th to the 20th is International Dark Sky Week.
Parks Canada only recognizes 13 dark sky preserves in our country but if you can't make it to one of them, anywhere with a good patch of dark open sky is great for stargazing.

Finally, April 25th is International Astronomy Day.
With the Moon just passing first quarter, it'll rise in the afternoon and won't set until about 4:00 a.m., meaning that it'll be visible all night long.
Get yourself a set of binoculars or a telescope or even just your eyes and take some time to enjoy our celestial companion.

And speaking of the Moon...

our Full Moon this month takes place on April 1st.
The Mi’kmaw refer to this early April Moon as the Full Springtime Moon Siwkewiku’s, marking the season Siwkw or Spring.
The Ojibwe of the Great Lakes region are still enjoying our Maple harvest with Iskigamizige-giizis, the “Maple Sugar Harvest Moon” or the “Maple Sap Boiling Moon”.

We also see plants beginning to bloom with European Settlers calling it the Pink Moon, a reference to the phlox flowers that bloom first during spring on the East coast – and NOT to the colour the moon will appear.
For some reason the term Pink Moon has stuck even though we don’t really see many pink flowers blooming in this part of Canada.
Maybe it’s because it’s kind of an Easter-ey colour.
Oh hey,
speaking of Easter…
you know how the date for Easter seems to change every year?
Do you know why?
Well I just found this out, it has to do with the Moon!
Easter takes place the Sunday after the First Full Moon to follow the equinox.
This is known as the Paschal Full Moon,
the first full Moon of spring, and it’s why Easter Sunday falls on April 5th this year.

And will Artemis II launch us Moon-ward this month? You’ll know more than I do at this point junior scientists.  

From April 15th to the 29th, the Earth will make its annual passage through dust particles left by comet C1861/G1 Thatcher.
This dust burns up in our atmosphere and we're lucky enough to get to witness it as the Lyrid's meteor shower.
The Lyrids are named after their radiant,
the region of sky from which they appear to originate,
which is near Vega,
a bright star in the constellation
Lyra, the Lyre.
The Lyrids peak after midnight on the morning of the 22nd with 10 to 18 meteors per hour.
Even though the radiant is Lyra, meteors can be visible anywhere in the sky.
With the waxing crescent of the moon setting around 2:00 a.m., our skies should be nice and dark to spot some meteors.
Good luck, junior scientists.

So, there we have it. Our April skies will usher in warmer weather, leading us till summer before you know it.
And I urge you to take advantage of these last early evenings
to take some time....

and look up.

See you next month, junior scientists and don't forget to have a science-tastic day.

Special thanks to Royal City Science's own planetary geochemist, Dr. Glynis Perrett for her help in preparing our star gazing guide

and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.