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April night sky highlights

April night sky

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — If you’re looking for something fun and educational to do with the kids, there are a couple of celestial shows coming up this month.

The first one is Friday, April 3. Venus is going to cross Pleiades which is a cluster of stars also known as the Seven Sisters. All you have to do is look in the western sky after sunset Friday evening and find a dark spot away from city lights. To get an even better view, you can use a pair of binoculars to watch the bright planet slowly move across the star cluster.

Another neat event that will be happening next week is a full super moon. On April 8, the moon will be full about nine hours after perigee, which is when the moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit around the Earth. This is going to be the second of three supermoons this year. Also during this full moon all of the landing sites from the Apollo moon missions will be in view, including the Sea of Tranquility.

Finally close to the end of the month is the Lyrid meteor shower. This peaks the night of April 21 and April 22. This is named after the constellation Lyra. It’s one of the oldest meteor showers. The shower exists thanks to the comet Thatcher.