Eyes on the skies — April

Welcome to the Ontario Parks “Eyes on the Skies” series. This space (see what we did there?) will cover a wide range of astronomy topics with a focus on what can be seen from the pristine skies found in our provincial parks.

For those of us in Ontario, April is that transition month between winter and spring weather. The snows start to melt away, the lakes start to open up and, by month’s end, the first buds may appear on the trees.

Here are our astronomical highlights for April 2025:

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The sun

The sun is the closest star to the Earth.

It is a tremendous, massive ball of gas about 1,400,000 km across. The thermonuclear energy at the core of the sun radiates outwards in all directions and by the time that energy arrives at the Earth, over 150,000,000 km away, its still powerful enough to provide us with the light and heat required to support the life on our planet.

Sunrise and sunset times:

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The moon

The moon has long captivated observers of all ages. April’s lunar phases of the moon occur as follows:

Did you know that many First Nations teachings, including those of the Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee people, use the back of a turtle’s shell as a lunar calendar?

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The April 8, 2024 Total Solar Eclipse anniversary Gift! 

It was a year ago this April 8, that the great Canadian eclipse occurred, enthralling millions across our province!

Fortunately for us, the weather generally cooperated in Ontario and Quebec, sending visitors from all over the world to see this great event from our beautiful province.

Total Solar Eclipses are extremely rare and require the precise ratios of a planet’s moon to its sun of their diameters and distances.

In our case, our moon is almost exactly 400 times closer to us than the sun and also 400 times closer. As a result, it perfectly blocks out the light but only for a very small portion of the Earth.

In the picture above taken of last year’s eclipse, we can clearly see the solar prominences (pink extensions) dotting the surface and the cloudy tendrils of the sun’s corona (outer atmosphere) extending outwards in all directions with the moon (big black circle in the middle), obscuring the sun perfectly.

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Comets and meteor showers

April brings us the first decent meteor shower since April – the Lyrids (originating from the constellation of Lyra the Harp).

While not as spectacular as the more famous Perseids and Geminids, the shower can easily provide up to 20 meteors an hour when seen best from a dark sky site and after 1:00 a.m. on April 21 into April 22. However, the nearly full moon will light up the skies making all but the brightest meteors nearly impossible to see.

On any given night in the dark skies of provincial parks, you could see as many as five to 10 meteors per hour, especially after midnight.

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Featured constellations: the Bears and a Dragon

In last month’s blog, we discussed some of the constellations that are prominent in the spring: Leo the Lion, Cancer the Crab, and Coma Berenices (Queen Berenice of Egypt’s hair).

This month, we will focus on two of the most well-known, as well as one of the longest, constellations visible in the night sky: Ursa Major, the Great Bear (Big Dipper) and Ursa Minor, the Little Bear (Little Dipper).

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This completes our review of April skies.