Sky & Telescope - March 2019 - 47

cloud features is when it's at its highest
before sunrise. Jupiter culminates a bit
earlier each day, reaching the meridian
a little after sunrise at the beginning of
the month but almost an hour before
sunrise at the end.
Saturn clears the horizon about two
hours after Jupiter at the start of March.
Once Saturn is high enough we can see
it and Jupiter shine to either side of the
Teapot asterism of Sagittarius (Saturn
to the left or upper left and Jupiter to
the upper right of the pattern). Jupiter is
ever so gradually catching up to Saturn.
The long-awaited next conjunction of
these two slow-moving giants will occur
fairly low in the evening sky in December 2020 - and will be a historically
close one. In March 2019 Saturn is at a
minimum in brightness - magnitude
+0.6 - and its equatorial diameter is
16″. The wondrous rings are tilted close
to 24° from edge-on.

At month's end Mercury rises about
an hour before the Sun. But the planet
appears very low in the southeast and is
a difﬁcult sight for observers at midnorthern latitudes.

DAWN

SUN AND MOON

Venus begins March rising about 2
hours before the Sun, but the interval
gets a little shorter by the end of the
month. Venus fades from magnitude
-4.1 to -3.9 during March, its disk
shrinking from 16″ to 13″ wide as its
illuminated fraction increases from 72%
to 81%. But Venus stands only about 10°
above the southeast horizon at 45 minutes before sunrise as the month opens.

The Sun reaches the March equinox
at 5:58 p.m. EDT on March 20th. This
event marks the beginning of spring in
the Northern Hemisphere and start of
autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Moon hangs as a waning
crescent 3° right or upper right of
Saturn on the morning of March 1st
(a daytime occultation of Saturn by
the Moon is visible from Texas, Cen-

Dawn, March 16
45 minutes before sunrise
Jupiter

Mars
December
solstice

Uranus

Mercury
Earth
Sun

Jupiter
Neptune
Saturn

Venus
June
solstice

ORBITS OF THE PLANETS
The curved arrows show each planet's movement during March. The outer planets don't change
position enough in a month to notice at this scale.

tqu These scenes are drawn for near the
middle of North America (latitude 40° north,
longitude 90° west); European observers should
move each Moon symbol a quarter of the way
toward the one for the previous date.

tral America, and large swathes of the
Paciﬁc Islands). At dawn on March
2nd a slender lunar sliver is 4° right
of bright Venus. On the evening of
March 11th the waxing crescent Moon
is around 7° upper left of Mars, and
the next evening lower right of the
Hyades. On the night of March 18th,
the waxing gibbous Moon shines near
Regulus. The waning Moon is 4° left or
lower left of Jupiter at dawn on March
27th and some 3° lower left of Saturn
on the morning of March 29th.
¢ Contributing Editor FRED SCHAAF
has been writing about the skies above
us for more than 40 years.

Dawn, March 28 - 29
1 hour before sunrise
Moon
Mar 28
Saturn

March 22

Saturn

Sept.
equinox

March
equinox

Around 9 pm

Moon
Mar 29

Aldebaran

S A G I T TA R I U S

S A G I T TA R I U S
Pleiades

TA U R U S
Mars

Looking South-Southeast

Looking West, halfway up

Looking South-Southeast

sk yandtele scope.com * M A RCH 2 019

http://www.skyandtelescope.com

Sky & Telescope - March 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - March 2019