What's Up Above? March Stargazing

The night sky in March is different.  It’s a feeling type and visual type of difference. A celestial difference. March is a month of transition for the night sky dome overhead. Enter the springtime sky. Most significant of this season is the vernal equinox, the transition from winter to summer, passing through spring.  Our Sun glides its ecliptic path noticeably higher in the daytime sky.  Days grow longer, and the nights feel not so cold.  (Dare I say this living in the mountains, where March is our snowiest month?)

The transition benefits the stargazer. We can now observe many of the outstanding gems of the winter sky without straining our necks to look straight up, and being outside at night is a bit less brutal.  Moreover, these spectacular winter jewels are viewable earlier in the evening. Unfortunately, for those of us living in the world of daylight savings time, once we “spring forward” evening now arrives later, and so do skies dark enough for stargazing.

Is it a fair tradeoff? My hunch is you’ll answer “yes” after hearing what’s up above in March. There is the aforementioned spring equinox; a full lunar eclipse; Neptune is easy to locate with binoculars; and, the winged god of messages, our innermost planet Mercury, soars high in the east at dawn. Not bad, not bad at all. But first, a lunar eclipse, as the seasons go round and round.

A Wee Hours Total Lunar Eclipse, March 3^rd

Get ready and take an afternoon nap to prepare yourself for the full Worm Moon to turn copper red during a total lunar eclipse during the early morning hours of March 3^nd. We Earthlings are fortunate as the eclipse (total or partial) is visible from any location on Earth where the Full Moon is above the horizon at the time. For this specific lunar eclipse, its path across Earth begins in the western Pacific Ocean, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hawaii, and the western half of North America.

The March Full Moon is called the Worm Moon, and it is the first Full Moon of the spring season. Here’s a tidbit for you. For many years it was thought the Worm Moon referred to earthworms appearing in the soil. From worms to birds, spring begins to fill the air. Or, so it was thought. Recently it was discovered the moniker came from the Naudowessie indigenous people’s reference to the worms that emerged from tree bark as it thawed during early in the spring season.

More about this eclipse. An eclipse has distinct parts to it. Take a look at the image below. The eclipse begins when the Moon passes through an outer region of the Earth's shadow called the penumbra. As the outer part of the Earth's shadow, it appears to cover part of the Sun's disk, but not all of it as shown. Consequently the Moon's brightness will be reduced as it receives less light to reflect, yet the whole Full Moon's disk remains illuminated albeit dimmed and darker by a noticeable degree.

●      The penumbral eclipse begins at 1:45am

●      The partial eclipse begins at 2:50am

●      Total eclipse begins at 4:05am

●      Total eclipse ends at 5:03am 

●      Partial eclipse ends at 6:17am

●      Moonset at 6:34am

Er, Astro Mark, did I hear correctly?? Are those times right?

Okay, I know this is really late, or really early depending on how you look at it, to be up and outside observing an eclipse. I get it. How about you give it your best effort?

First, you don’t need to witness the entire lunar eclipse. Set outside, look up, and experience the eclipse for five minutes. That’s how much time it will take for you to fully witness the night, the sky, and the darker than dark darkness surrounding you. After five minutes, you did it; now back to the still warm bed. Is this too much to ask? Okay, What about setting your alarm? When it goes off, you get up still asleep, and go to the window to bear witness to a cosmic alignment. Then, turn around and slide back in bed. Still too much to ask? Or, what about getting up a bit earlier than normal in the morning (before 6am) on the 3^rd and watching the eclipse draw to a conclusion?  I applaud your effort.

A Sunday Evening Gathering of Venus, Neptune, and Saturn, March 8^th 

At dusk on the evening of March 8^th our trio will meet for a cozy conjunction above the western horizon. The unlikely trio is visible from the setting of the Sun till a few minutes before 8pm local time when they slide below the horizon. That gives you a little less than one hour to see these planets in an unusually tight conjunction. A conjunction is when two or more celestial objects (planets, stars, comets) appear close together in the sky and share the same right ascension from our perspective as an observer on Earth. (Inside tip: these planets are viewable at sunset in the days leading up to the 8^th when they’ll be in their tightest conjunction.) 

You can’t miss Venus, the Greek goddess of beauty, attraction, and desire. She is simply brilliant in her dominance over the western horizon. There is no object brighter in the western evening sky as bright and bold as Venus. As the evening progresses soon you will see a creamy-yellow, or maybe a pale golden point of light that doesn’t flicker to the lower right of Venus. About the width of two fingers held up against the sky. You can’t see the planet’s rings without the aid of optics, rather you’re looking for a bright star that’s warmer in hue. As for both Saturn and Neptune, to truly enjoy the mystery of our gas and ice giants, get yourself to a dark site as far as reasonably possible from intrusive light pollution. Once you arrive, don’t forget to give your eyes about twenty-minutes to acclimate to the night.

On to Neptune. Why should you now make some effort to view the god of the sea, brother of Jupiter and Pluto, and son of Saturn now? Because of their grouping together it’s simple to hop from the very bright object (Venus) to a moderately bright object you can still see with your unaided eye (Saturn), and then using a smaller pair (10x30) of binoculars and placing Saturn in the upper left edge of the binocular’s field of view, it will reveal a faint blue star (Neptune) below and slightly to the right just inside the same field of view with Saturn is in the upper left edge. Ease peasy.

Tired of Standing Around. Jupiter Gets Moving, March 10th

The cosmos asked a lot from the god of the sky; Jupiter, the king of the planets. “Stay put!” the Universe commanded Jupiter, and thus it has been so for the last four months. Since November of 2025, our guardian of our inner solar system has basically been standing still. On March 10^th, this will cease to be the case. Meaning, Jupiter will stop appearing to move westward and resume its usual eastward motion.

The retrograde motion is caused by the Earth's own motion as it orbits around the Sun. As we circle our home star, our point of view of the celestial dome changes. This results in us “seeing” our superior, outer planets, appear to move from side-to-side in the sky in relation to the background stars.

Time to move on. With the end of retrograde motion, Jupiter continues to be amazingly blazingly visible with the onset of dusk in the evening hours. It is occupying an astonishingly towering altitude of 64 degrees above your south-eastern horizon. At 10:48pm local time, the king of the planets is fully dominant of the night sky when it achieves its highest altitude in the southern sky; an incredible 73 degrees. Almost directly overhead from where you are standing!

Talk about “getting your move on!” 

The Vernal Equinox, March 20^th 

We have four seasons on Earth; winter, spring, summer, and autumn. (Other planets have seasons, but that discussion is for another day.) Our seasons divide our journey around the Sun and are a result of our planet’s angle to the Sun. To complicate things, the season in the northern hemisphere is the opposite of the season in the southern hemisphere. It’s that darn Earth angle to the Sun thing again. The vernal equinox is the first equinox of the calendar year, and the astronomical beginning of the spring season in the northern hemisphere. This year, the equinox occurs at 8:46am local time. Oppositely, in the land down under and the southern hemisphere, it marks the beginning of autumn, the third equinox of the year. If you’re standing on the equator at the time of the spring equinox no matter where you are on Earth, the Sun will be directly overhead (assuming it happens in daylight hours) and day and night are approximately both 12-hours in duration. From this date forward the Earth tilts more towards the Sun in the northern hemisphere giving us more daylight hours, earlier dawns, and later sunsets.  Oh yeah!

A Conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon, March 26^th 

Oh, and you say you want to learn more about astronomical conjunctions? Okay. Recall this idea of it all being about our point-of-view? To us, standing on Earth, the objects share the same right ascension, or ecliptic longitude. Basically, the same “east-west” position in the sky. Here’s the kicker, while they appear to be up close and personal with one another, they’re not on the same distance between them, and us in “depth.” That separation can be hundreds of millions of miles, or astronomical units; and in some instances a light year or two. This 26^th of March, the Moon you see will be 227 thousand miles away; while the planet Jupiter you see that night will be 402 million miles away. That’s a difference of approximately 250,016,000 miles. Looks can be deceiving.  More so, while the Moon, which is one-day past First Quarter, is clearly divided in half by the terminator, as Jupiter resides below and to the left, it’s not dimmed in any way (shining at a magnitude of -2.5), fully embolden by having just completed its retrograde motion.

The image above is of the conjunction at 7pm local time. You’d have to try hard to not see the pair. Even with moonlight brightening the night sky, Jupiter is without question, the king of the sky.

It’s time for stargazing. Sure, you still need to dress warm, wear a hat and gloves, and tolerate the cold, but all a little less so. Transition is in the air. The payoff is you can comfortably gaze at all of these celestial events. Can you do me a favor? At least make a good faith effort to catch the total lunar eclipse this month? If you do, gaze at the eclipse and then look around the night sky. Consume the other colorful jewels tossed haphazardly across our late winter night. And if you miss the eclipse, don't worry. There will be more.

Within the month of March is a significant astronomical event, a season within the Earth’s ceaseless celestial rotation around the Sun. It is the vernal equinox, the first equinox of the year. With it we turn the page to a new season as the Sun crosses the equator heading north, at the moment of the equinox. A new beginning, a rebirth. I ask you to pause and consider all of the acknowledgement and celebration of this event that has taken place across time and across cultures around our world. The universe truly is inside us. 

Oh, and on the 20^th, the spring equinox, if you’re so inclined go ahead and try to stand an egg on end. (It’s an old wives’ tale; that you can only do it on the equinox.) In truth, you can balance an egg on end any day of the year, if you’re patient. Have an egg-ceptionally happy vernal equinox.

Clear skies to you!