April 17, 2026: Two bright stars, Arcturus and Spica, anchor the eastern sky after sunset while Venus and Jupiter shine in the west. Use this guide to locate them and understand their motion.
by Jeffrey L. Hunt
Chicago, Illinois: Sunrise, 6:07 a.m. CDT; Sunset, 7:34 p.m. CDT. Times are calculated by the US Naval Observatory’s MICA computer program. Check local sources for sunrise and sunset times.
Venus as an Evening Star
April Evenings
With brilliant Venus, Jupiter, and winter’s brightest stars in the western sky after sunset, the eastern sky has two bright stars, Arcturus and Spica.
Arcturus in East
Step outside an hour after sunset. Topaz Arcturus is about 25° above the eastern horizon. The star’s name means “bear guard,” and along with its constellation, Boötes, it chases the Great Bear (Big Dipper). At this hour the dipper is high in the north-northeast.
Arcturus is the brightest star north of the celestial equator, the imaginary circle in the sky above Earth’s equator, and the second brightest star visible from the mid-northern latitudes after Sirius. The star is 37 light years away and shines with an intensity of 100 suns.
In Chicago, Arcturus has connections to a great event in the city. The 1933 World’s Fair used Arcturus’ light to energize photoelectric cells attached at the eyepieces of four telescopes in the eastern U.S. — Yerkes Observatory, University of Illinois, Allegheny Observatory, and Harvard Observatory — to switch on a searchlight that signaled the beginning of the fair.
Arcturus was thought to be 40 light years away. The 1933 fair was 40 years after the 1893 Columbian Exposition that also occurred in Chicago. There is a competing story that the searchlight was signaled from the light of a telescope set up on the fairgrounds.
Spica
From Arcturus, blue-white Spica, Virgo’s brightest star, is over 30° to the lower right. As the 10th brightest star visible from the mid-northern latitudes and shining with an intensity of nearly 2,000 suns, Spica is 250 light years away.
Arcturus and Spica are in the sky nearly all night. Arcturus sets in the west-northwest after sunrise, while Spica sets in the west-southwest during morning twilight. Each night these stars appear slightly farther eastward. At the summer solstice, Arcturus is high in the south-southwest, while Spica is below it, less than halfway up in the south-southwest.
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