This month’s planets
Mars shines in the dawn sky alongside the majority of the Solar System’s outer gas planets
Planet of the month
Mars will be an important member of the parade of planets that will be stretched out across the predawn sky from the east to the southeast. If Mars was shining high in a dark sky at +0.9 it would be a striking sight, an obvious orange-red ‘star’ to the naked eye. However, during April and May Mars will be shining low in a sky bright with the slow but relentless approach of sunrise, so it will not be as easy to see. In fact, if your sky is misty or hazy you might even struggle to spot it without binoculars.
At the start of our observing period the planets on either side – Venus to its left and Saturn to its right – will both be much brighter and more obvious, so if you look between them you should 82 be able to pin down the famous Red Planet. But the planets in the parade will be spending the month ahead shifting their positions and order, and by the end of our observing period Mars will have moved away from Saturn and will be shining just six degrees away from Jupiter, which will itself have swapped positions in the line with Venus. By then Mars will be rising just an hour before the Sun.