See A Brilliant Full ‘Flower Moon’ Rise: The Night Sky This Week

BreakingInnovationScienceSee A Brilliant Full ‘Flower Moon’ Rise: The Night Sky This WeekByJamie Carter,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky.Follow AuthorApr 27, 2026, 02:00am EDTToplineApril closes, and May begins with a brilliant full flower moon on May 1 amid a sky in seasonal transition. Spring’s constellations now dominate the evening, summer’s brightest stars climb after midnight and the Big Dipper rides high overhead. Here’s everything you need to know about stargazing and astronomy from April 27-May 3, 2026. NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory atop Cerro Pachón in Chile is outlined against the full Moon rising above the horizon. Photo by Hernán Stockebrand, a NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador.RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AUTimelineWednesday, April 29After dark, the nearly full moon shines very close to Spica in Virgo, a star that lies about 250 light-years from the sun. It’s actually a tight binary system of two massive stars orbiting each other every four days. Though they appear as one point of light, their combined luminosity is more than 10,000 times that of the sun. Friday, May 1The full Flower Moon turns officially full at 12:23 p.m. EDT today. As always, the best moment to watch is moonrise where you are — just after sunset — when it appears largest and glows orange through atmospheric haze. Saturday, May 2Although tiny Mercury will be lost in the sun’s glare today, it will appear to pass close to Eris, the second-largest known dwarf planet in the solar system after Pluto, but three times farther from the sun.Sunday, May 3A waning gibbous moon will rise later at night close to Antares, a red supergiant star about 700 times the diameter of the sun. It’s the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius. These are the constellations that can be seen in spring. They include the Great Spring Triangle. The design features a forest and a teles...