04/07/2017 – Ephemeris – Learn about light pollution tonight

Ephemeris for Friday, April 7th.  The Sun will rise at 7:12.  It’ll be up for 13 hours and 5 minutes, setting at 8:17.  The Moon, half way from first quarter to full, will set at 6:11 tomorrow morning.

This evening at 8 p.m. the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society will hold its monthly meeting at Northwestern Michigan College’s Rogers Observatory featuring a talk by observatory director Jerry Dobek about light pollution and what can be done about it to help preserve our dark night skies.  I expect he will give us a progress report on the effort to make the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore a Dark Sky Park.  Special emphasis will be LEDs, now that they are proliferating, the good the bad and the ugly.  At 9 p.m. there will be a star party with the gibbous Moon and Jupiter at opposition from the Sun and about at its closest to us at 414 million miles (666 million km) away.

Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addendum

Jupiter and its moons as it should appear tonight at 10 p.m. April 7, 2017 (2 hr UT April 8). Note also the Great Red Spot, which may be paler than it appears here. I double checked the transit time of the red spot across Jupiter’s central meridian, which is predicted for 10:42 p.m. (2:42 UT, April 8) across Jupiter’s central meridian. The position of the Red Spot is correct for 10 p.m.

Times are from Project Pluto:  https://www.projectpluto.com/jeve_grs.htm