April 17
The Crooked Claw
Sun Position
The Sun is in Aries near +19° declination. Northern hemisphere days are long and the sky does not fully darken until well into the evening; southern hemisphere autumn evenings are excellent for observing with longer nights now established.
Sky Highlight
The Lyrids continue their build-up. This is also a good week to observe the Virgo Cluster from southern mid-latitudes, where it passes high enough after dark that the galaxies are at their least affected by atmospheric absorption, southern observers have a shorter window but a clean one.
Deep Sky Object
M49 (NGC 4472), elliptical galaxy, Virgo Cluster, about 55 million light-years. The brightest Virgo Cluster member, M49 appears as a smooth, slightly elliptical glow in small telescopes; deep imaging reveals a faint outer envelope and several associated dwarf galaxies. Visible in small telescopes from both hemispheres.
Featured Star
Khambalia (λ Vir) is a white main-sequence pair 187 light-years away (two A-type stars) whose name is one of the rarest survivors in stellar nomenclature: it comes from Coptic, the latest stage of the ancient Egyptian language, meaning 'crooked claw.' It is among a very small number of named stars whose name traces directly to Egyptian rather than Greek or Arabic tradition.
Around This Date
- April 17, 1970Apollo 13's crew returned safely to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific after using the lunar module as a lifeboat following the oxygen tank rupture on April 13.
- April 19, 1971The Soviet Union launched Salyut 1, the first space station, into Earth orbit, beginning the era of long-duration human presence in space.
Khambalia carries a Coptic name through Arabic transmission into a Latin catalog, a star that has been renamed once and holds the original long after the language that named it ceased to be spoken.