The Watchers

April hosts two meteor showers, but only one major. The first - Virginid meteor shower - will reach its maximum rate of activity on April 12. The Moon will be 5 days old and will present minimal interference. The maximum rate of meteors expected to be visible from a dark location is 5 per hour.

The second meteor shower of the month - Lyrids - will reach the maximum rate of activity on April 23. However, the Moon will be 16 days old, and being so close to Full Moon, will severely limit the observations  The maximum rate of meteors expected to be visible from a dark location is around 10 per hour. 

The best time of the month to observe faint objects such as galaxies and star clusters is April 7.

The Moon will reach full phase on April 22.

The Indian Point nuclear plant in New York reported a radioactive spill that began on February 5, 2016. Since then, groundwater tests conducted directly at the plant site showed a 65,000% increase in radioactivity, media reported.

The water leak happened when a drain overflowed as the workers were transferring highly radioactive water during a maintenance exercise. Under normal circumstances, a sump pump would filter the water into another system, however, it seems it was out of order at the time of the incident, and the water seeped into the groundwater instead.

It is still not familiar how much water has spilled, but analysis revealed radioactivity levels surpassing 8 million picocuries per liter, the highest regulators recorded so far at the Indian Point nuclear plant. Normal radioactivity levels measure around 12 300 picocuries per liter.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder discovered a new class of mesospheric waves by observing the high parts of the atmosphere over Antarctica. These waves seem to send constant ripples through the Earth's atmosphere and probably affect high-level winds, climate and Earth-based communications systems.

Newly discovered waves sweep through the mesosphere, the part of Earth's atmosphere beginning at an altitude of about 48 km (30 miles), every 3 to 10 hours, causing significant temperature fluctuations in a short time span.

"These waves are very large perturbations, causing up to 100-degree Fahrenheit changes in temperature in less than five hours, and every time we look, we see them," said lead author Cao Chen, a Ph.D. student in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and Aerospace Engineering Sciences department.