What’s Up: April 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA

Total Eclipse Time!

A total solar eclipse sweeps across the U.S. on April 8. U.S. areas outside totality will enjoy a partial eclipse and can join NASA’s live eclipse webcast!

Highlights

• All month – Jupiter is a brilliant, steady light low in the western sky following sunset.
• April 8 – Total solar eclipse across the U.S., as the Moon’s shadow moves from Texas northward through Maine. Outside the path of totality, the rest of the continental U.S. will experience a partial eclipse. The amount of the Sun covered by the Moon at maximum eclipse depends on your distance from the path of totality.
• April 8-12 – Mars and Saturn rise together in the hour or so preceding sunrise. They’re closest on April 10 & 11 – about half a degree apart, or the width of the full Moon.)
• April 10 – Find the slim lunar crescent (only 7% illuminated) hanging above brilliant Jupiter in the west after sunset. Comet 12P is visible with binoculars or a small telescope about 6 degrees below the Moon, just below and to the right of Jupiter.
• April 23 – Full moon

Transcript

What’s Up for April? Some easy-to-spot planets, there’s still time to observe comet 12P, and how to enjoy this month’s solar eclipse if you’re not in the path of totality.

For several days in the first half of April, early risers can watch Mars and Saturn rising together in the morning. Taking a look about half an hour before sunrise, you can find them low in the east, about 10 degrees above the horizon. They’re at their closest on April 10th and 11th, but still really close in the sky the whole second week of April.

Now, on the evening of April 10th you can find the Moon with Jupiter in the west. Jupiter’s easy to identify as a bright, unflickering light, low in the west following sunset, all month. Being just a couple of days after its “new moon” phase, the Moon shows only 7% of its illuminated surface on this evening, making for a beautiful crescent shining there with the giant planet Jupiter.

This is also a good night to have a look for comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, which has been getting brighter, and is easily observable with binoculars or a small telescope, especially if you can get away from bright city lights. The comet will be just beneath the Moon, and just right of Jupiter, but you’ll have to be quick, as it drops below 10 degrees elevation an hour after sunset and then sets an hour later. So you’ll want a clear view toward the horizon, and be looking for it as twilight ends. If you want to catch this comet, do it soon, because it will be too close to the Sun in the sky to observable after mid-April, and later when it makes its closest approach to Earth, it will be on its way outward from the Sun and growing fainter.

2024 Total Solar Eclipse

There’s a total solar eclipse on the way, and it’s kind of a big deal. We’ve been really fortunate to have two total eclipses visible across a wide swath of the U.S. recently, first in 2017, and now on April 8th, 2024. The next time such an eclipse will cross the States is 21 years from now. If you live in or near the path of totality, or you’re traveling there to experience the eclipse, you’re in for an incredible experience.

But what if you’re not going to be able to experience totality for this eclipse in person? What can you expect, and how can you still enjoy it? Well for starters, NASA has you covered with a live webcast, from multiple locations, as the Moon’s shadow moves across the country. So join us for the total eclipse online, whatever your plans.

If you’re anywhere in the continental U.S. outside of totality, you’ll still experience a partial solar eclipse. The amount of the Sun to be covered by the Moon at maximum eclipse depends on how far you are from the path of totality.

In observing a partial eclipse, you’ll still need to use specialized eye protection, such as eclipse glasses, a pinhole projector, or a telescope with a solar filter. One of the easiest methods is something most of us have in our kitchen – a regular colander. These make excellent pinhole cameras that project the eclipse onto the ground. And barring that, the sun dapples that filter through the tree leaves do something very similar. It’s also fun to note the eerie way the sunlight dims during the eclipse, especially in places where the Moon covers 80% or more of the Sun’s disk.

NASA has a bunch of eclipse resources to help you get ready for this awe-inspiring celestial event. There’s info on safe-viewing, citizen science opportunities, and you’ll even find our “eclipse explorer,” where you can find eclipse details for your specific zip code.

From wherever you’re observing, solar eclipses are remarkable events. So observe safely, and join our live webcast, because it’s an event you surely don’t want to miss.

Here are the phases of the Moon for April.

Stay up to date on NASA’s missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov. I’m Preston Dyches from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that’s What’s Up for this month.

Skywatching Resources​

• NASA’s Night Sky Network
• NASA’s Watch the Skies Blog
• Daily Moon Observing Guide
• Full Moon Blog

About the What’s Up production team

“What’s Up” is NASA’s longest running web video series. It had its first episode in April 2007 with original host Jane Houston Jones. Today, Preston Dyches, Christopher Harris, and Lisa Poje are the science communicators and space enthusiasts who produce this monthly video series at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Additional astronomy subject matter guidance is provided by JPL’s Bill Dunford, Gary Spiers, Lyle Tavernier, and GSFC’s Molly Wasser.

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Earns Neil Armstrong Space Flight Achievement Award

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) team received the American Astronomical Society’s Neil Armstrong Space Flight Achievement Award “for exceptional performance and extraordinary perseverance in successfully delivering a sample from asteroid Bennu to Earth.” The award, named after the first person to walk on the Moon, is given annually and recognizes the extraordinary contributions made by individuals or teams in the advancement of space exploration.

The OSIRIS-REx team includes members from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado; the University of Arizona, Tucson; and KinetX in Tempe, Arizona.

OSIRIS-REx launched Sept. 8, 2016, and the mission had to overcome many obstacles on its seven-year journey to Bennu and back.

“Bennu’s small size presented unprecedented challenges for the team to navigate safely near the asteroid,” said Michael Moreau, OSIRIS-REx deputy project manager at NASA Goddard. “In addition to these known challenges, Bennu threw a number of curveballs during the mission’s encounter between 2019-2020.”

The asteroid presented its first surprise in December 2018 when NASA’s spacecraft arrived at Bennu. The OSIRIS-REx team found a surface littered with boulders, and no areas in which the spacecraft could safely touch down to collect a sample unless navigation performance was improved significantly over what was designed before launch. The team also discovered that Bennu was ejecting particles of rock into space.  

Despite the challenges, on Oct. 20, 2020, OSIRIS-REx descended to the surface of asteroid Bennu, touched down within three feet from the targeted point, collected a sample, delivering it to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023. The 4.29 ounces (121.6 grams) ultimately collected represents the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space and over twice the mission’s mass requirement. The sample will give researchers worldwide a glimpse into the earliest days of our solar system, offering insights into planet formation and the origin of organics essential for life on Earth. Data collected by the spacecraft combined with future analysis of the Bennu sample will also aid our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.

The award was presented at the 61st Goddard Space Science Symposium, held at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. This is one of many recognitions the mission has received in the past month, including Aviation Week Network’s 66th Laureate Award, the 2024 Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy, and the National Aeronautical Association’s Robert J. Collier Trophy.

NASA Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Processing and curation for OSIRIS-REx’s Bennu sample takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (the Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Find more information about NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex

Rani Gran
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Jamie Adkins

Safety First!

NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station wear eclipse glasses in this image from March 26, 2024. While millions of people on Earth experience the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, the space station crew will have the opportunity to see it from 250 miles above our planet. Except during the brief period when the Moon completely blocks the Sun’s bright face, it is not safe to look directly at the Sun without specialized eye protection for solar viewing. On Earth, you must look through safe solar viewing glasses (“eclipse glasses”) with the ISO 12312-2 international standard or a safe handheld solar viewer at all times. If the crew has the opportunity to directly image the eclipse through space station windows, they will use a handheld camera equipped with a solar filter and will not look at the Sun directly.

Based on current orbital position and ground track predictions for the International Space Station, astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory will have three opportunities to view the ground shadow (penumbra and umbra) of the Moon as it tracks across the Earth surface during the total solar eclipse. After encountering the eclipse shadow above the Pacific Ocean, then during a pass from the New Zealand area to California and Idaho, the space station is predicted to encounter the eclipse during a time of near-to-full totality while over Maine and New Brunswick around 3:30 p.m. EDT.

For those who won’t be in the path of totality or on the space station, NASA will have live coverage of the eclipse.

Image Credit: NASA/Loral O’Hara

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Monika Luabeya

NASA VIPER Robotic Moon Rover Team Raises Its Mighty Mast

NASA’s VIPER – short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover – now stands taller and more capable than ever. And that’s thanks to its mast.

VIPER’s mast, and the suite of instruments affixed to it, looks a lot like the rover’s “neck” and “head.” The mast instruments are designed to help the team of rover drivers and real-time scientists send commands and receive data while the rover navigates around hazardous crater slopes, boulders, and places that risk communications blackouts. The team will use these instruments, along with four science payloads, to scout the lunar South Pole. During its approximately 100-day mission, VIPER seeks to better understand the origin of water and other resources on the Moon, as well as the extreme environment where NASA plans to send astronauts as part of the Artemis campaign.

The tip of VIPER’s mast stands approximately eight feet (2.5 meters) above its wheel rims and is equipped with a pair of stereo navigation cameras, a pair of powerful LED headlights, as well as a low- and high-gain antenna to transmit data to and receive data from the Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas on Earth.

The stereo navigation cameras – the “eyes” of the rover – are mounted to a part of the mast that gimbals, allowing the team to pan them as much as 400 degrees around and tilt them up and down as much as 75 degrees. The VIPER team will use the navigation cameras to take sweeping panoramas of the rover’s surroundings and images to detect and further study surface features such as rocks and craters as small as four inches (10 cm) in diameter – or about the length of a pencil – from as far as 50 feet (15 meters) away. And because the navigation cameras are mounted up high, it gives the VIPER team a near human-like perspective as the rover explores areas of scientific interest around the Moon’s South Pole.

Due to the extremes of light and darkness found on the Moon, VIPER will be the first planetary rover to have headlights. The headlights will cast a narrow, long-distance beam – much like a car’s high beams – to help the team reveal obstacles or interesting terrain features that would otherwise stay hidden in the shadows. Positioned next to the rover’s two navigation cameras, the lights feature arrays of blue LEDs that the rover navigation team determined would provide the best visibility given the challenging lighting conditions on the Moon. 

In order to transmit large amounts of data across the 240,000 miles (384,000 km) that separate Earth and the Moon, VIPER has a gimballing precision-pointed, high-gain antenna that will send information along a very focused, narrow beam. Its low-gain antenna also will send data but using radio waves at a much lower data rate. The ability for the antennas to maintain the correct orientation, even while driving, serves a critical function: without it, the rover cannot receive commands while in motion on the Moon and cannot transmit any of its data back to Earth for scientists to achieve their mission goals. All that data is then transferred from the DSN to the Multi-Mission Operations and Control Center at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, where rover operations are based.

Prior to installation on the rover, engineers put the mast through a variety of testing. This included time in a thermal vacuum chamber to verify the white coating surrounding the mast insulates as intended. After the mast’s integration in the clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the team also successfully performed check-outs of its components and for the first time sent data through the rover using its antennas.

VIPER is part of the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program and is managed by the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. VIPER will launch to the Moon aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. It will reach its destination at Mons Mouton near the Moon’s South Pole. 

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Rachel Hoover

Citizen Scientists Invited to Collect Data for NASA During Eclipse

On April 8, 2024, as the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, thousands of amateur citizen scientists will measure air temperatures and snap pictures of clouds. The data they collect will aid researchers who are investigating how the Sun influences climates in different environments.

Among those citizen scientists are the fifth- and sixth-grade students at Alpena Elementary in northwest Arkansas. In the weeks leading up to the eclipse, these students are visiting the school’s weather station 10 times a day to collect temperature readings and monitor cloud cover. They will then upload the data to a phone-based app that’s part of a NASA-led program called GLOBE, short for Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment.

The goal, according to Alpena Elementary science and math teacher Roger Rose, is to “make science and math more real” for his students. “It makes them feel like they’re doing something that’s important and worthwhile.”

The GLOBE eclipse tool is a small part of the much broader GLOBE project, through which students and citizen scientists collect data on plants, soil, water, the atmosphere, and even mosquitoes. And while some of these studies require equipment, contributors to the eclipse project will only need a thermometer and a smart phone with the GLOBE Observer app downloaded. They can access the eclipse tool in the app.

This is not the first time the GLOBE eclipse tool has been deployed in North America. During the 2017 North American eclipse, NASA researchers examined the relationship between clouds and air temperature and found that temperature swings during the eclipse were greatest in areas with less cloud cover, while temperature fluctuations in cloudier regions were more muted. It’s a finding that would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, without the assistance of numerous amateur observers along the eclipse path, said Marilé Colón Robles, a meteorologist based at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and the GLOBE project scientist overseeing the cloud study portion of the project.

The number of weather stations along this year’s eclipse path is limited, and while satellites give us a global view, they can’t provide the same level of detail as people on the ground, said Ashlee Autore, a NASA Langley data scientist who will be conducting a follow-up to the 2017 study. “The power of citizen science is that people make the observations, and they can move.”

It’s still unclear how temperature fluctuations during a total eclipse compare across different climate regions, Colón Robles said. “This upcoming eclipse is passing through desert regions, mountainous regions, as well as more moist regions near the oceans.” Acquiring observations across these areas, she said, “will help us dig deeper into questions about regional connections between cloud cover and ground-level temperatures.” The studies should give scientists a better handle on the flow of energy from the Sun that’s crucial for understanding climate.

In many areas, citizen scientists are expected to gather en masse. “We’re inviting basically all of El Paso to campus,” said geophysicist and GLOBE partner John Olgin of El Paso Community College in Texas. The area will experience the eclipse in near totality, with about 80% of the Sun covered at the peak. It’s enough to make for an engaging event involving citizen scientists from the U.S. and Juarez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande. 

Just a few minutes of midday darkness will have the long-term benefits of increasing awareness of NASA citizen science programs, Olgin said: “It’s going to inspire people to say, ‘Hey look, you can actually do stuff with NASA.’”

More than 30 million people live along the path of the 2024 eclipse, and hundreds of millions more will see a partial eclipse. It will be another 20 years before so many people in North America experience another total solar eclipse again.

With this in mind, Colón Robles has a piece of advice: As the Moon actively blocks the Sun, set your phone and thermometer aside, and marvel at one of the most extraordinary astronomical events of your lifetime.

Visit NASA’s Citizen Science page to learn how you can help NASA scientists study the Earth during eclipses and all year round. The GLOBE Program page provides connections to communities of GLOBE participants in 127 countries, access to data for retrieval and analysis, a roadmap for new participants, and other resources.

By James Riordon
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

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