The Evening Sky in April 2026
There might be a bright comet in the western twilight sky in the first week of April. Comets are unpredictable beasts, so we won’t know for sure till it gets near the Sun. If it holds together then it will pass just 120,000 km from the Sun’s surface on April 4. That’s just one-third of the Moon’s distance from Earth. The comet will be low in the western sky both approaching the Sun and receding from it. The head of the comet should be visible on April 1 and 2, setting 55 minutes and 40 minutes after the Sun respectively. It will then be above the place where the Sun set. From April 3 to 6 the comet’s head will be too low in the twilight to be seen but the tail might be visible, if it survives. It will be above and right of the sunset point as it moves away from the Sun.
The comet is called C/2026 A1 (MAPS). The MAPS name comes from the first letters of the surnames of the four guys who found the comet in their search program. Comet MAPS is one of a family of comets called the Kreutz group. They are all in the same sun-grazing orbit, fragments of a big comet that broke up many centuries ago.
Brilliant silver Venus is low in the northwest. It sets 50 minutes after the Sun at the beginning of the month and 80 minutes after at the end, so isn’t on the chart. The Moon will be near Venus on the 19th.
Golden Jupiter is the other ‘evening star’. It appears low in the north soon after sunset and sets around 11 pm mid-month. The Moon will be near Jupiter on the 23rd.
Sirius, the brightest true star, appears midway down the northwest sky at dusk. It is soon followed by Canopus, southwest of the zenith. Below Sirius are bluish Rigel and orange Betelgeuse, the brightest stars in Orion. Between them is a line of three stars: Orion's belt. To southern hemisphere star watchers, the line of three makes the bottom of 'The Pot', now tipped on its side.
Below and right of Jupiter are Pollux and Castor marking the heads of Gemini the twins. Further right is a luminous spot, the Praesepe star cluster. It marks the shell of Cancer the Crab. Praesepe is also called the Beehive cluster, the reason obvious when it is viewed in binoculars.
Right of Praesepe is the medium-bright star Regulus. It is the brightest star in Leo the Lion. The curve of stars below Regulus outlines Leo's mane, upside down in our southern hemisphere view. A crooked vertical line of stars right of Regulus makes Leo's hind quarters with the brighter star further right being his tail.
Crux, the Southern Cross, is high in the southeast. Below it, and brighter, are Beta and Alpha Centauri, often called 'The Pointers'. Alpha Centauri is the closest naked-eye star, 4.3 light-years away. Beta Centauri, like most of the stars in Crux, is a blue-giant star hundreds of l.y. away. Canopus is also a very luminous distant star; 13 000 times brighter than the sun and 300 l.y. away.
The Milky Way is brightest in the southeast above Crux. It can be traced to nearly overhead where it fades and becomes very faint in the northwest, right of Orion. The Milky Way is our edgewise view of the galaxy, the pancake of billions of stars of which the sun is just one.
The Clouds of Magellan, LMC and SMC are midway down the southwest sky, easily seen by eye on a dark moonless night. They are two small galaxies about 160 000 and 200 000 light years away.
Mercury, Mars and Saturn bunch together in the dawn sky. At the beginning of April Mercury is a bright ‘star’ rising due east two hours before the Sun. Mars is a fainter red ‘star’ below Mercury. Saturn is a cream-coloured ‘star’ below Mars. Mercury slips lower in the dawn while Mars and Saturn rise earlier. Around the 20th the three will form a tight group, rising around 5 a.m. The Moon will be near the three planets on the morning of the 16th. The grouping is strictly line-of-sight, of course. Mercury is 160 million km away, Mars 340 million km and Saturn 1560 million km away, mid-month.
*A light year (l.y.) is the distance that light travels in one year: nearly 10 million million km. Sunlight takes eight minutes to get here; moonlight about one second. Sunlight reaches Neptune, the outermost major planet, in four hours. It takes four years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.
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