Striking in photographs and picturesque in a telescope, the Sombrero galaxy offers a fine, if unusual, example of an edge-on spiral galaxy. This is a lovely object, with a huge and brilliant central galactic bulge likely caused by the machinations of a massive black hole, and an inky-dark dust lane that resembles the brim of the traditional Mexican hat that lends its name to this distant island universe…

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2 May. Look for Venus in the eastern sky about an hour before sunrise. The planet in early May is preposterously bright, shining at about magnitude -4.7, enough to cast a shadow in very dark conditions. At the beginning of the month, in a telescope, you see about 1/4 of the planet’s face lit by the Sun. By the end of the month, you see the planet half lit as it dims slightly to magnitude -4.5. A truly beautiful ‘Morning Star’.

3 May. First-Quarter Moon, 02:47 UT…

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The stars of the Big Dipper are a wonderful guide to a handful of splendid galaxies and other deep-sky sights. Above and below the handle of the Dipper, most vividly, lie two stately face-on spiral galaxies that are visible, at least to some degree, in a small telescope. In dark skies, these two nearby galaxies display clear hints of a striking and naturally ubiquitous pinwheel shape that also reveals itself in the clouds of a hurricane or the seed arrangement in a sunflower…

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Turn your gaze to the sky under the handle of the Big Dipper and you’ll see only two reasonably bright stars. These are the 3rd-magnitude stars Cor Caroli and 4th-magnitude Chara. Cor Caroli (the “Heart of Charles”) was named by Edmund Halley after the martyred English King Charles I. It is a pretty double star, easily split in a small telescope even at 30-40x. The blue-white primary shines at magnitude 2.9; the fainter yellow companion is magnitude 5.6 some 19 arc-seconds away from the primary. The pair is about 110 light years away…

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The constellation Cancer is the faintest of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, and many casual stargazers pass it by when looking from bright Gemini to the striking group Leo to the east. In city skies, the constellation is hard to see at all. But there are some excellent sights in Cancer within reach of a telescope, including the superb star cluster M44, the Beehive Cluster, which is one of the finest objects for a wide-field telescope or a pair of binoculars…

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1 April. Mercury reaches its greatest eastern elongation at 19° from the Sun. In the northern hemisphere, the speedy little planet is at its highest altitude of the year. Look for Mercury low over the western horizon about half an hour after sunset. The planet shines at a respectably bright magnitude -0.2 and, in a telescope, reveals a half-lit disk. Slightly fainter and much redder Mars lies about a fist’s-width above Mercury. Over the next week, you will see Mercury plunge back towards the horizon as it quickly makes its way around the Sun…

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Along with Taurus, Gemini is one of the two most northerly constellations of the zodiac. It lies just east of Auriga and the bright star Capella, and it’s marked by the two bright stars Castor and Pollux which lie less than 5º apart (a little less than the width of your three middle fingers held at arm’s length). To find the constellation draw an imaginary line diagonally from Rigel past Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion about a distance equal to the separation of these two bright stars. This will land you smack in the middle of Gemini. In March and April, the constellation lies still well above the western horizon in the early evening hours…

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