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StarDateYour guide to the universe Author: Billy Henry
StarDate, the longest-running national radio science feature in the U.S., tells listeners what to look for in the night sky. Language: en-us Genres: Astronomy, Education, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Pointing the Way
Thursday, 23 April, 2026
It’s hard to ask for a better signpost for finding things in the night sky than the planet Venus. Right now it’s the brilliant “evening star,” low in the west as twilight fades. And it points the way to two other wonders: the planet Uranus and the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades is fairly easy to find on its own. Its brightest stars form a tiny dipper shape. In fact, the Pleiades is often mistaken for the Little Dipper. But that dipper is in the north, anchored by the North Star. Despite its prominence, the Pleiades is best appreciated with a technique known as averted vision – seeing it from the corner of your eye. And Venus offers a good chance to try it. Look at Venus, then see if you can see the sparkly cluster to its right. They’re separated by the width of a couple of fingers held at arm’s length. Uranus is about one finger width below Venus. It’s the third-largest planet in the solar system. But it’s so far away that it looks tiny and faint. It’s an easy target for binoculars or a small telescope, though. It looks like a faint star. A telescope reveals something interesting about Venus – it doesn’t look quite complete. That’s because it’s in a gibbous phase. If you watch the planet for months, you’ll see it get thinner and thinner. That’s because Venus will cross between Earth and the Sun in late October. Like the new Moon, it’ll be lost in the Sun’s glare no matter how you look at it. Script by Damond Benningfield
