April 16
The Trailing Hem
Sun Position
The Sun is in Aries near +18° declination. Northern mid-latitudes enjoy long, bright evenings; southern hemisphere nights are now clearly longer than days.
Sky Highlight
The Lyrids continue building toward their April 22 peak. Rates are still low (perhaps 3 to 5 per hour) but Lyra is fully clear by midnight, and early Lyrid meteors tend to be swift, leaving occasional persistent trains. Best observed after midnight from northern locations; the radiant rises later in the south.
Deep Sky Object
M94 (NGC 4736), spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici, about 16 million light-years. M94 has an unusually bright, compact inner ring of intense star formation giving its core a distinct starburst appearance, and a faint outer ring detectable in deep images; the inner ring is visible in amateur telescopes under good conditions. Best from northern mid-latitudes.
Featured Star
Syrma (ι Vir) is a yellow-white F0IV subgiant 69.8 light-years away. Its name, meaning 'train' or 'trailing hem' in Greek by way of Arabic transmission, refers to its position at the lower end of Virgo's figure. It is a quiet, slightly evolved star just beginning to leave the main sequence, roughly the mass of Vega but older and more advanced.
Around This Date
- April 16, 1972Apollo 16 launched with John Young, Charles Duke, and Ken Mattingly aboard, bound for the Descartes Highlands, the first mission to land in the lunar highlands.
- April 18, 1906The San Francisco earthquake, while not an astronomical event, was later used by astronomers studying Earth's crust dynamics as a reference event for understanding how geophysical processes affect observatory site stability.
Syrma has marked the hem of Virgo's robe in every star atlas since Ptolemy; a placeholder star, doing its job quietly at the edge of a famous figure.