This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, April 15th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 29 minutes, setting at 8:28, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:56. The Moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 6:15 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. By 9:15 PM tonight or about 45 minutes or so after sunset, Venus may be seen very low in the West. A telescope will show a very tiny disc on Venus, because it is still pretty much beyond the Sun, 141 million miles (226 million kilometers) away from us. Over the next 6 months it will be moving closer to us and becoming much larger. Jupiter is the brilliant star-like object high in the southwestern sky at the same time. Venus will set at 10:35, while Jupiter will hold out to 3 AM. Meanwhile, Mercury, Mars and Saturn are lined up just west of the Sun, but unfortunately are overwhelmed by bright morning twilight. Southern Hemisphere observers will them bunched up next week.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Jupiter and Venus with fading constellations of winter at 9:30 PM tonight, April 15, 2026. Created using Stellarium.
Telescopic Jupiter and Venus as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification at 9:30 PM tonight, April 15, 2026. Venus will be visible for a short time near the western horizon, while Jupiter is visible most of the night. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 11.1″, and be 91.2% illuminated. It’s on the far side of the Sun. Jupiter will be 37.1″ in diameter. Io will be behind Jupiter and in its shadow until 12:16 AM, when it will appear near Europa. The (”) symbol means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on April 15, 2026. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 16th. 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 15 and 16th, 2026. 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.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 