Look for its inverted question-mark shape high above the southern horizon. Plan to look above the southern horizon this evening to see the half-lit moon below Gemini's bright twin stars, Castor and Pollux. April 12 isn't a day that we remember as a famous anniversary, but perhaps it should be. It marks the date in 1961 when the very first person circled the globe in a spacecraft, the first and only space flight for cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. On the same day 20 years later, NASA launched the first of its reusable shuttles, the Columbia, commanded by John Young and Robert Crippen.
Tonight is the night for Mars to approach within a little more than two degrees from Saturn.
By month's end, Mars will overtake and pass by both planets. How appropriate that the first official full moon of the spring should share the sky with the constellation Virgo. Virgo's brightest star, Spica, is associated, as the entire constellation is, with the story of Persephone, the girl that brings the springtime. Dogs are well represented among the constellations, beginning with Canis Major, the greater dog, whose bright star, Sirius, is the brightest in the northern sky. You can see Orion and Canis Major in the southwest any evening this month, while Bootes rises in the east.