For March 2025, the first quarter moon will pass Jupiter on March 5-6. Daylight Savings time will begin on Sunday, March 8, so spring the clocks forward an hour. The waxing gibbous moon will pass red Mars in the northeast on the same evening, but no occultation for us this month. Instead this month, the occultation involves the earth’s shadow covering the full moon for a total lunar eclipse starting in the late evening of March 13, but totality occurring in the early hours of March 14.
As this beautiful sequence by EAAA member James Rosenthal shows, the colors of the event can be remarkable. The earth’s umbral shadow is not black, but red, due to refraction of long waves (the red of sunsets) around the rim by our atmosphere, hence the “blood moon”. The blue at top instead is due to the upper ozone layer absorbing heat and longer waves, but transmitting some blue instead.
The Vernal Equinox occurs on Saturday, March 22 to begin spring in the northern hemisphere. Days and nights will be equally 12 hours long, and the sun will rise due east and set due west on that day. The last quarter moon is on March 22, rising at midnight. The new moon occurs on March 29.
Mercury is well placed below Venus in the evening sky as March begins. It and Venus get together in the western sky on March 12, when Venus, rapidly overtaking us to pass between us and the Sun on March 22, lies 6 degrees north of much fainter Mercury in the dusk, about 45’ after local sunset. Both are lost in the sun’s glare in a week. Note the size and phase of Venus change greatly in the first three weeks. As March begins, Venus is still 13% sunlit, but when it passes Mercury two weeks later, it is down to a very slender but now closer and larger crescent, only 5% lit. It passes 8.4 degrees north of the Sun at inferior conjunction on March 22, and might be spotted on the other side of the Sun, in the dawn sky on the following morning, only 1% sunlit. By month’s end, it is easy to see in the dawn, now 2% sunlit. On the 29th, the very slender waning lunar crescent and equally slender Venus will both be above the eastern horizon about 30’ before sunrise, a great photo op for smartphones! Use a tripod for stability and zoom in to capture each slender crescent in the dawn!
Mars was at opposition as 2025 began, and is now being left behind by the Earth. But it is still close enough to reveal telescopic details as its seasons to are changing. Like us, it has a tilt of about 23 degrees, and it too has an equinox presently, with its equator facing the Sun.
Alas, Saturn is now lost in the Sun’s glare. On March 23, we could have seen its rings at their thinnest, edge on as seen from Earth, but the Sun is in front of it now! When it does come out into the dawn sky in April, for the next several months, we will look up under the ring plane to see the dark side of the rings from Earth!
Here is its predicted appearance on April 10, 2025 in the dawn sky, when it and Mercury will lie side by side just before brilliant Venus is the dawn. Note several moons, orbiting in the ring plane, can transit its disk and cast eclipse shadows on its cloud tops in 2025.
For a detailed map of northern hemisphere skies visit skymaps.com.
The constellation Cassiopeia makes a striking W in the NW. South of Cassiopeia is Andromeda’s hero, Perseus. Between him and Cassiopeia is the fine Double Cluster, faintly visible with the naked eye and two fine binocular objects in the same field. Perseus contains the famed eclipsing binary star Algol, where the Arabs imagined the eye of the gorgon Medusa would lie. It fades to a third its normal brightness for six out of every 70 hours. My Master’s thesis research at the University of Florida was based on using these changes to map the tidally distorted shape of both stars in such close orbits.
Indeed, not all stars are as round as our slowly spinning Sun. Vega spins in 16.5 hours.
Yellow Capella, a giant star the same temperature and color as our much smaller Sun, dominates the overhead sky in the northwest. It is part of the pentagon on stars making up Auriga, the Charioteer (think Ben Hur). Several nice binocular Messier open clusters are found in the winter milky way here.
East of Auriga, the twins, Castor and Pollux highlight the Gemini; it is directly above us as darkness falls in early March. UWF alumni can associate the pair with Jason and the Golden Fleece legend, for they were the first two Argonauts to sign up on his crew of adventurers. Mars and the Moon make a equilateral triangle with Castor and Pollux on the evening of March 8th, another great photo opportunity for smartphones!
South of Gemini, Orion is the most familiar winter constellation, dominating the southern sky at dusk. The reddish supergiant Betelgeuse marks his eastern shoulder, while blue-white supergiant Rigel stands opposite on his west knee. How bright does Betelgeuse appear to you tonight? In 2019-20, this famed supergiant had expanded and cooled, forming a dust envelope that has darkened much of its southern hemisphere it to less than a quarter its normal brightness in visible light. Now the dust has dissipated, and it is back at its normal brightness as the alpha star of Orion again. Just south of the belt, hanging like a sword downward, is M-42, the Great Nebula of Orion, an outstanding binocular and telescopic stellar nursery. The bright diamond of four stars that light it up are the trapezium cluster, one of the finest sights in a telescope and among the youngest known stars. I used my brand new, $350 See Star 30 the night before the snow fell to capture perhaps my own personal best shot of this intricate stellar nursery.
In the east are the hunter’s two faithful companions, Canis major and minor. Procyon is the bright star in the little dog, and rises minutes before Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius dominates the SE sky as darkness falls. At 8 light years distance, Sirius is the closest star we can easily see with the naked eye from West Florida. When Sirius is highest, along our southern horizon look for the second brightest star, Canopus, getting just above the horizon and sparkling like an exquisite diamond as the turbulent winter air twists and turns this shaft of starlight, after a trip of about 200 years!
To the northeast, look for the bowl of the Big Dipper rising, with the top two stars, the pointers, giving you a line to find Polaris, the Pole Star. In West Florida it sits unmoving 30 degrees high in on our northern sky.
If you take the pointers of the Big Dipper’s bowl to the south, you are guided instead to the head of Leo the Lion rising in the east, looking much like the profile of the famed Sphinx. The bright star at the Lion’s heart is Regulus, the “regal star."
The constellation Cancer lies midway between the Gemini to the west and Regulus, east of it. Almost directly overhead when darkness falls at month’s end, look under dark skies for a faint blur of light in the middle of the four stars that make up the crab’s body. This is the Praespe, or Beehive, cluster, M-44, familiar to the ancients. Its blurry appearance led Charles Messier to include it in his catalog of things that look at first like comets, but do not move and are far away among the stars and galaxies. Now check it out with binoculars, and resolve it into dozens of stars, hence the “Beehive.”
If you follow the handle of the Big Dipper to the south, by 9 p.m. you will be able to “arc to Arcturus,” the brightest star of Spring and distinctly orange in color. Its color is an indication of its uniqueness. Its large speed and direction through the Milky Way suggests it was not formed with our Galaxy, but is a recent capture from the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, a smaller satellite galaxy now being assimilated by our huge spiral galaxy. Many of its lost stars, like Arcturus, follow a band across the sky at about a 70 degree angle to our galactic plane. Arcturus is at the tail of kite shaped Bootes, the celestial bear driver chasing the two bears from his flocks. Spike south then to Spica in Virgo. Here appearance to the Greeks marked the time to plant, for they associated Virgo with Persephone, daughter of Ceres of the Harvest, returning from six months underground with Pluto to now bless the growth and greening of the upperworld. So when Spica rises now at sunset in the SE, it is time to plant your peas! Likewise, when Persephone goes back down to Hades and disappears in the sun’s glare in September SW skies, it is time to get your corn in the crib! This cycle goes back to the birth of agriculture.
For March 7, the Pensacola State Planetarium will present, “From the Earth to the Universe” at 6 p.m. Be sure to reserve your tickets on Purple Pass. The last eight shows have been sold out, and we will hold a solar observing session before the show, and moon photography afterwards, clear skies permitting.
We have set new dates for our public gazes at Big Lagoon State Park west of Pensacola for Saturdays, March 8 and 22; remember the park gate closes at sunset. We plan to be back at the Pensacola Beach Pavilion starting on April 4.
For more information on the Escambia Amateur Astronomers and our local star gazes for the public, visit us on the web at sites.google.com/view/escambiaastronomers or join us on Facebook. For gaze info or requests, call Wayne Wooten at (850) 291-9334 or message me on FaceBook. You can contact our sponsor, Lauren Rogers, at Pensacola State College at lrogers@pensacolastate.edu.
