[Bluearrowll]

What's in the sky tonight?
April 8, 2012

-As twilight fades down, Look for bright Sirius in the southwest, Orion's horizontal Belt off to the right, and Aldebaran and Venus farther to the right in the west. They all form a long, almost straight line. The line is horizontal if you live near latitude 38° north.

-Venus (magnitude –4.6; in Taurus) shines very high and ever more brilliant in the west during and after twilight. It doesn't set now until some 2½ hours after dark. This is just about as high and bright as Venus ever becomes in its 8-year cycle of apparitions. Look to its lower right for the Pleiades, and to its left for orange Aldebaran.

Astro Picture of the Day:
April 8, 2012

Source:
Hurtling through a cosmic dust cloud some 400 light-years away, the lovely Pleiades or Seven Sisters star cluster is well-known for its striking blue reflection nebulae. In the dusty sky toward the constellation Taurus and the Orion Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy, this remarkable image shows the famous star cluster at the upper left. But lesser known dusty nebulae lie along the region's fertile molecular cloud, within the 10 degree wide field, including the bird-like visage of LBN 777 near center. Small bluish reflection nebula VdB 27 at the lower right is associated with the young, variable star RY Tau. At the distance of the Pleiades, the 5 panel mosaic spans nearly 70 light-years. The dust clouds are seen as brown clouds, not to be confused with clouds that might be seen in terrestrial levels.