April 2027: the Lyrids under a bright Moon, and the Milky Way core before dawn

The Lyrids: an honest outlook

The Lyrid peak comes two days after the April 20 full Moon, which is still about 95 percent lit and up for most of the night.

Moonlight will hide all but the brightest meteors this year.

• Active: April 14 to 30 (some sources give April 15 to 29).
• Peak: about 01:42 UT on April 23, which is 9:42 p.m. EDT, 8:42 p.m. CDT, 7:42 p.m. MDT and 6:42 p.m. PDT on Thursday, April 22. Arizona, on standard time, reads 6:42 p.m.
• Rate: the zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) is about 18. ZHR is what one observer would count in an hour under a perfect, moonless sky with the radiant overhead. Under this Moon, expect only the occasional bright one.
• Radiant: in Lyra, near the bright star Vega. It rises between about 8:20 and 9 p.m. local time and is close to overhead before dawn.
• Speed and origin: about 49 km (30 miles) per second, from Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1).

If you try anyway

The peak itself falls in the evening, when the radiant is low or still below the horizon. The better hours are before dawn on April 23, with Lyra high. Keep the Moon behind you or hide it behind a building or a ridge, lower the ISO to around 800 to 1600 so the sky doesn't wash out, and shorten the exposures. A bright Lyrid over a moonlit landscape can still make a good frame; a meteor count won't.

The Milky Way core returns

The bright center of the Milky Way, in Sagittarius, is absent from the evening sky through the winter. It returns before dawn: in February it is only just clearing the horizon at the end of the night, in March it is more practical, and in April it rises in the small hours and climbs higher toward dawn. By late April it rises around midnight.

From the US the core never climbs very high. It stays low in the south, and the farther south you are, the higher it gets, which gives Texas, southern Arizona, southern New Mexico and Southern California an advantage over the northern states.

The Moon decides which mornings work. The darkest run is the first half of April, around the April 6 new Moon, before the waxing Moon starts staying up into the small hours. After the April 20 full Moon, the waning Moon is still in the sky before dawn through the end of the month, so the next dark mornings come in early May, around the May 6 new Moon. March mornings around the March 8 new Moon are another option.

Exact times shift with your latitude and with where you are within your time zone, so check a planetarium app such as Stellarium for your site.

Where to shoot it

You need a dark, open horizon from southeast to south, with no city glow in that direction.

• Texas: Big Bend National Park, far south in west Texas, and nearby Big Bend Ranch State Park.
• New Mexico and Arizona: Chaco Culture National Historical Park (dirt roads; high-clearance four-wheel drive advised; closures after heavy rain) and Grand Canyon National Park.
• Utah: Natural Bridges National Monument, the first International Dark Sky Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park.
• California: Death Valley, Joshua Tree and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
• Nevada: Great Basin National Park. The Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive closes for winter and after snowfall, so check whether it has reopened.
• East: Stephen C. Foster State Park in southern Georgia, and Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania, where the core stays lower but the campground reopens in mid-April.

Settings for the core

• Lens: 14 to 24 mm on full frame, wide open at f/1.4 to f/2.8. ISO 3200 is a good starting point, anywhere from 1600 to 6400 depending on your camera.
• Exposure: the 500 rule (500 divided by the focal length, after applying your crop factor) gives about 35 seconds at 14 mm and 25 seconds at 20 mm. On high-resolution sensors the NPF rule gives shorter, sharper results; most astro apps calculate it. A small star tracker lets you expose longer at a lower ISO.
• Focus manually on a bright star with magnified live view, and shoot RAW so you can set the white balance later.
• Foreground: keep the tripod in place and shoot the landscape in the same session, so the frames line up if you blend them.
• Several frames of the same scene can be stacked to reduce noise.
• Phones: on a tripod, the night or astrophotography mode of a recent phone can record the core from a truly dark site.

Two more targets, and the clock

• Zodiacal light: from late February to early May it rises from the western horizon after dusk. It needs a dark sky and no Moon, so the evenings around the April 6 new Moon are best.
• Eta Aquariids: active from April 19, peaking on May 6 under a new Moon. From the US the radiant rises only after about 2 or 3 a.m., so this is a predawn shower too, just after this guide's window.
• Clocks: daylight saving time began on March 14, so April times are daylight time. Arizona stays on Mountain Standard Time, so its clocks read an hour earlier than Denver's; Hawaii doesn't change.
• Public nights: Kitt Peak National Observatory's Nightly Observing Program near Tucson is busiest from January through May; book about a month ahead.
• When the core clears your horizon, share the result in the Astro photography hobby on Garbamons.