What was happening in the sky when the Titanic sunk on April 14, 1912?
The US Nautical Ephemeris shows that the moon was close to New Moon which happened on April 16, so it would have been setting soon after the sun as a thin crescent. Soon after sunset, Venus would have been a spectacular -3.3 magnitude ‘star’in the west, with Saturn at +0.4 higher up on the western horizon and Mars at +1.6 further up. Venus, Saturn and Mars would have been lined up over a distance of about 90 degrees or so, with Saturn only about 45 degrees away from Venus. The Lyrid meteor shower doesn’t start until later in April so that would not have been visible at all. Without a Full Moon, the ocean would have been very dark indeed with no ‘glint’ off of any iceburgs to be seen until it was too late.
