SkyHunt: April 2001

LEO: The ferocious spring constellation

Among the exciting animal constellations you can see in April is Leo the Lion.

Picture a mighty hunting cat, laying on the African savannahs. In its best-known outline, the Lion’s head and raised-up neck are made up of the six stars that trace a backward question mark or ‘sickle’ shape. Its hind quarters folded up – as if laying on the grass – are an elongated triangle. A line between the bottom of these two shapes is the beast’s belly, flat against the ground.

More complex outlines trace a line between the upper parts of the triangle and sickle for a back, as well as other stars branching out from the main shape like limbs and a more complex head.

To find Leo in April from the GTA, look to the Southeast after 8 p.m. for the shapes described (hint: the sickle is the easiest part to identify.)

Like all constellations, Leo is also a celestial signpost, pointing to deep space objects that appear nearby, including the Beehive cluster, a dim explosion of stars just to the lower right of the sickle.

Even more impressive is the Virgo galaxy cluster, a smattering of distant galaxies like ours, containing billions of stars. The cluster’s name comes because it lies almost directly between the constellation Virgo and an area of space just left of the far end of Leo’s hind.