Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Tuesday, April 2nd.  The sun will rise at 7:21.  It’ll be up for 12 hours and 50 minutes, setting at 8:11.   The moon, 1 day before last quarter, will rise at 3:15 tomorrow morning.

The 4th month of the year began yesterday.  Daylight hours in the Interlochen/Traverse City area and will increase from 12 hours and 50 minutes today to 14 hours 12 minutes on April 30th.  The altitude, or angle, of the sun above the southern horizon at local noon will be 50 degrees tomorrow and will ascend to 60 degrees on April 30th.  The altitude of the sun in the Straits area will be a degree lower.  The actual time of local apparent noon this month for the Interlochen/Traverse City area, when the sun passes due south, will be about 1:43 p.m.  For the straits area local noon occurs about 4 minutes earlier.  The reason for the is that the straits, are about one degree of longitude east of Traverse City.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Calendar of Astronomical Events for April 2013 for Eastern Daylight Time

Apr 03  00:37  LAST QUARTER MOON 
    10  05:35  NEW MOON 
    12  08:12  Moon at Descending Node 
    14  06:51  Aldebaran 3.4°S of Moon
    14  14:23  Jupiter 2.1°N of Moon
    15  18:21  Moon at Apogee: 404865 km
    17  20     Mars in Conjunction with Sun 
    18  08:31  FIRST QUARTER MOON 
    21  00:44  Regulus 5.9°N of Moon
    22  07     Lyrid Meteor Shower
    24  20:10  Spica 0.0°N of Moon
               (Occultation visible across the southern Atlantic Ocean
                and South Africa.  Link)
    25  15:57  FULL MOON 
    25  16:09  Partial Lunar Eclipse; mag=0.014
    25  22:28  Saturn 3.5°N of Moon
    26  10:07  Moon at Ascending Node 
    27  15:48  Moon at Perigee: 362268 km
    28  04     Saturn at Opposition 
Calendar of Astronomical Events Courtesy of Fred Espenak,
www.AstroPixels.com

Fred’s site has calendars for all the time zones in the United States.  Foe daylight time use the time zone one zone east.  This Eastern Daylight Time time zone above uses the Atlantic Standard Time zone.

Star Chart for mid April at 10 p.m. Created using my LookingUp program.

The chart includes the following finder aids:

• Big Dipper pointers point to Polaris.
• The arc of the Big Dipper’s handle points to Arcturus.
• Extend the arc as a spike to Spica.
• Leaky Big Dipper bowl leaks on Leo the lion’s back