The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of April 25, 2026

Saturday: The bright star Regulus is about a thumb width to the upper right of the moon at 9:00 p.m. They are five and a half fists held upright and at arm’s length above due south.

Sunday: One hundred six years ago tonight, astronomers Heber Curtis and Harlow Shapley were debating the distances of some of our farthest neighbors: galaxies. Curtis argued that the universe consisted of many galaxies millions of light years away. Shapley thought that the spiral structures seen in telescopes were actually close by as a part of the Milky Way. They also had different views on the size of the Milky Way. Learn more about their debate, called the Great Debate, at https://youtu.be/0MJCqJPMpeY. Learn more about the Milky Way by watching the center of it rise over the southeastern horizon at about 1:00 a.m.

Monday: The Eta Aquarid meteor shower peaks just before dawn on May 5 and 6. Since this meteor shower has a fairly broad peak range, you should start looking before dawn every morning this week. Meteor showers are named after the constellation from which the meteors appear to originate. The meteors appear to come from a point in the constellation Aquarius near the star Eta. This point is about one fist above the east horizon at 4:00 a.m. The Eta Aquarid meteors slam into the Earth at about 40 miles per second. They often leave a long trail. The Eta Aquarid meteors are small rocks that have broken off Halley’s Comet. For more information about the Eta Aquarids, go to http://earthsky.org/?p=158833.

Tuesday: Celebrate the ending of Global Astronomy Month by reading some poems and short stories submitted by astronomy fans at https://my.astronomerswithoutborders.org/programs/astroarts/astropoetry.

Wednesday: At 9:30 p.m., Jupiter is four fists above the western horizon and Venus is one fist above the west-northwestern horizon.

Thursday: Some open star clusters are easy to find and see, such as The Pleiades and The Hyades clusters in the constellation Taurus the bull. Some are difficult to see. M35, an open star cluster in the constellation Gemini the Twins, is in the middle. It doesn’t jump out at you, but it is easy to find if you have help. M35 is about one and a half fists above the west-northwestern horizon at 9:30 p.m., just to the right of two reddish stars of similar brightness. It is a family of a few thousand stars about 3,000 light years away. Open star clusters are young for stars, this one being about 100 million years old. The cluster is best seen using binoculars or a small telescope.

Friday: Orion stands low in the southwestern sky. At 9:00 p.m., the middle of Orion’s belt is about one fist above the west-southwest horizon. And talk about belt tightening! Alnilam, the middle star in the belt, is losing mass at a rate of about 100 thousand trillion tons a day. That’s a 1 followed by 17 zeros tons per day.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.