Feature Article March 11, 2004
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The Night Skies of March 2004
View five planets at once!
During the month of March, the late evening and early night sky is noticeably different from the night sky of January and February. The great hunter constellation, Orion, and his accompanying family of constellations, Taurus, Canis Major, and Canis Minor, have all moved from their dominant positions high in the southern sky to a lower position in the southwestern sky. As these groupings of stars move westward, their places high in the southeast are taken by the large constellations Leo, the Lion, and Virgo, the Maiden, two distinctive figures that are associated with the arrival of spring.
Some people may remember a saying, in like a lion; out like a lamb! It often refers to the kind of weather that is to be expected as spring arrives, but hundreds of years ago, our ancestors, who knew the night sky very well, recognized that it referred to the entry of the Lion into the eastern sky and the disappearance of Aries, the Ram, in the western evening sky. As will be seen shortly, these two constellations are the areas of the sky within which the two brightest of the planets are found this month. As Leo climbs up in the eastern sky during the first half of the night, his outline is easily recognized; bright stars giving the outline of a large backwards questions mark showed our ancestors the position of the head and forepaws of the great beast, and a distinct, right-angled triangle marked the position of its hind quarters. As evening twilight ends, the appearance of the stars of Aries low in the western sky are anything but the shape of a ram/lamb; its three bright stars, to the modern observer, seem to be more the shape of a hockey stick with the blade on the lower left side.
This is indeed a great month for viewing the planets, with the last two weeks of March and the first week of April being by far the best time this year to see all five of the bright naked-eye planets at once. They are not in a compact area of the sky, as they were two years ago, but very well spread out, almost evenly spaced, across the evening sky. The first one to be noticed by most people will be brilliant Venus, well up in the western sky, bright enough to be seen right after sunset, and maybe even before sunset by a few people. Careful observers should try to notice that its orbital motion carries it upward in the sky from night to night, past the stars of Aries during the first three weeks of March and nearer to the star cluster called the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, in the latter part of the month. By April 2, Venus will be remarkably close to the Pleiades. Also, at the end of March, Venus will be at its greatest height in the evening sky after sunset, a height it has not reached since 1996 and will not do so again until 2012. (Many aspects of Venus phenomena are repeated on an 8-year cycle.)
Just as Venus dominates the west, Jupiter reigns in the east. Rising at sunset and found below the paws of the Lion (See description of Leo, the Lion above.) Jupiter is at its brightest of any time this year. Reddish Mars is easily found in the west, above Venus and moving upward and past the Pleiades cluster, being closest to that group of stars on March 20. Saturn, as has been the case for several months, is still found high in the southern sky, to the right of the stars Castor and Pollux and well above the head of Orion. From March 15 to April 10, Mercury may be easily found below Venus and slightly above the western horizon. Careful observers will also notice its upward movement in the sky until the end of March. Try not to miss the following conjunctions of the crescent moon and several planets: the slim crescent to the upper left of Mercury on March 22 about 40 minutes after sunset, midway between Mercury and Venus on March 23 at the same time, beside Venus on March 24 and beside Mars on March 25.
More information about the spring sky is found in a book called The Beginner's Observing Guide, now available at Sharbot Lake Pharmacy.
