This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, April 23rd. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 53 minutes, setting at 8:38, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:43. The Moon, 3 days past last quarter, will rise at 5:09 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. At 9:30 PM this evening two of the five naked eye planets will be out. Jupiter, is now the brighter evening planet, outshining all the stars, and being our substitute Evening Star, if you will. It will be in the west. Below it is the bright star Aldebaran. To its lower left, the great constellation of Orion. The rapidly fading Mars, with its distinctive reddish hue, is high in the southwest, with the stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini to the right and below it. By 5:30 AM Venus will be seen very low in the east, as the Morning Star. It will require a low eastern horizon to spot it at that hour. It should be visible until a bit after 6:30. Saturn should be visible in the morning by the end of the month.
The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
The evening planets Jupiter and Mars seen with the fading stars of winter at 9:30 PM, on April 23rd, 2025. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.
Venus, Saturn and the Moon at 6 AM tomorrow morning, low in the east. Saturn may not yet be visible at our northerly latitude (45 N). Created using Stellarium.
The Moon 6 AM tomorrow morning, April 24, 2025, 3 1/2 days before new. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Telescopic Jupiter and Venus (north up) as it would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. Jupiter is shown for tonight, 10 PM, April 23, 2025. Its apparent diameter is 34.2″. Mars is 6.9″ in diameter, too small to be shown here. My lower size limit is 10″. Venus is shown in the morning of the 24th. Its apparent diameter is 40.6″, and is 23.3% iluminated. Planetary surface detail is more subtle than shown here. The ” means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on April 23, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 24th. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, April 23rd and 24th, 2025. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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