This is a time-lapse photo of the North Star. After several hours, viewers can see the stars appearing to move around the star. The North Staris above the North Pole, so as the earth rotates, this is the photographic result. (Photo courtesy of Scott Stobbelaar)

MARQUETTE — Finding a clear night for stargazing can be challenging in the often-cloudy state of Michigan, but such a night can bring awe-inspiring views of celestial objects.

Scott Stobbelaar, a facilitator with the Marquette Astronomical Society, talked about what can be seen in the April sky during his “What’s Up” astronomy talk, held on April 5 via Zoom and sponsored by the Peter White Public Library. He gives the presentations on the first Tuesday of each month.

“Astronomy is the kind of interest that you don’t go out when it’s convenient,” Stobbelaar said. “You go out when it’s clear, and it may not convenient and it may the weekend or you have something else planned.”

Checking the weather is part of his routine, he noted, as is checking star maps.

“The more you do that, the more you get familiar with the sky,” he said.

He suggested using skymaps.com, which indicated on its website that has evening sky maps available for free each month. The two-page monthly guide contains a detailed sky map, a monthly star calendar and a list of the best objects to see with a telescope, binoculars or just a set of eyes.

Front and center this month is the constellation of Leo the Lion, which Stobbelaar noted represents the spring sky. Leo is composed of a “backwards question mark” shape called the Sickle, with three stars in the back making up the hindquarters. Also found in Leo, he said, is a bright star called Regulus.

Determining a constellation’s shape can involve a bit of imagination.

“You can form your own object-figure with the stars, and that’s what you remember every time you go out,” Stobbelaar said.

The constellation Bootes, which he said resembles a kite, contains the bright star Arcturus. This star can be located by following the arc of the handle of the Big Dipper.

In fact, that explains why Bootes also is called the Bear Driver.

“The Big Dipper’s the Big Bear, and as the stars move in the sky during the night, it looks like it’s chasing the bear across the sky,” Stobbelaar said.

The Hercules constellation can be seen through the spring and summer, said Stobbelaar, who pointed out it contains four stars known as the Keystone — the “main stone” that holds an arch together. Hercules also contains what he called the “beautiful” globular cluster called M-13, made up of about 100,000 stars.

“It’s just peppered with stars,” said Stobbelaar, who showed a picture of M-13. “The beautiful thing about this object is that this is what it pretty much looks like through a small telescope. You don’t need a lot of power to see this.”

M-13 also is far away — about 25,000 light-years, he said.

A light year is defined as the distance light travels in one year, which according to NASA is about 6 trillion miles.

“That’s 6 with 12 zeroes,” Stobbelaar said.

He asked the program participants to consider that light from M-13 would take 25,000 years to reach Earth.

“The light is 25,000 years by the time it reaches us,” Stobbelaar said. “So, I always like to look at the sky as being a time machine. You’re looking back in time. It’s incredible, and the further the object, of course, the further back in time you’re looking.”

Rising in the east, he said, is the constellation of Lyra, which has four stars that resemble a parallelogram, and contains Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky.

It also is home to the ringed nebula.

“It’s a star that was like our sun and died, and bloated out to a red giant and then it shrunk down, and when it shrunk down, it left this ring of gas around itself,” Stobbelaar said.

Another spring constellation is Virgo, the home of the bright star, Spica.

“When I think of Virgo, I think of a Y shape,” he said.

In Virgo is the spiral-shaped Sombrero Galaxy, another faraway object that Stobbelaar said is about 40 million light years away.

To see the galaxy, though, viewers need a telescope, but Stobbelaar showed a Hubble Telescope image of the object. It is quite a sight, with NASA saying it looks like a broad-brimmed Mexican hat floating in space with thick dust lanes making up the “brim” of the galaxy.

Objects much closer to Earth can be seen this month, with Stobbelaar providing a few important dates to keep in mind:

≤ April 16 – A “pink moon” can be seen by Spica. NASA said that according to the Maine Farmer’s Almanac, this moon is named after the herb moss pink, a spring wildflower.

≤ April 22 – The Lyrid meteor shower will appear in the eastern sky.

≤ April 27 – The moon, Venus and Jupiter can be viewed in the morning.

Stobbelaar suggested people watch a star show at the Shiras Planetarium, located at Marquette Senior High School. More details can be found at shirasplanetarium.org.

If people are headed outside, Stobbelaar recommended looking at the nighttime sky this month, whereas in June, for example, viewers will have to stay up later to get a good dark-sky view. To get a better view than they’d get with the naked eye, have the option of checking out two telescopes at the Peter White Public Library.

Again, Stobbelaar urged people to avoid cloudy skies.

“Go out whenever it is clear, whether it’s morning or evening,” he said.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.