Sky & Telescope - March 2020 - 46

MARCH 2020 OBSERVING
Sun, Moon & Planets by Fred Schaaf
To find out what's
visible in the sky
from your location,
go to skypub.org/
almanac.

Brilliant Venus, Plus a Fine Triad
Venus reaches its 8-year highest at dusk, while Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn bunch at dawn.

his is a heady, truly amazing month
for planet-watchers.
For viewers at mid-northern latitudes, Venus reaches greatest elongation and its highest angular altitude
in what is arguably the best evening
apparition of its 8-year cycle of recurring appearances. The bright planet
also ends the month just a few degrees
short of an extremely close encounter
with the Pleiades that will occur early
in the month of April.
Meanwhile, in the ﬁnal hours of
night, the three classic superior planets
gather into a tight, changing grouping
all month. The crescent Moon joins
Jupiter and Mars for a compact bunching on March 18th. Mars passes very
close to Jupiter on March 20th and
then, just 11 days later (at month's
end), very close to Saturn.

Dusk, March 6 - 8
1 hour after sunset

Moon
Mar 6

DUSK AND EVENING
Venus makes 13.004 orbits around the
Sun for every eight Earth orbits. So on
any given night, Venus is almost exactly
where it was relative to the Sun, Earth,
and stars 8 years, 16 years, and so on
ago - and will be 8 years, 16 years, and
so on into the future. The synchronization of orbits isn't quite precise, but it's
close enough to maintain the similarities of the 8-years-apart apparitions of
Venus for much longer than a human
lifetime. And of the ﬁve kinds of evening
apparitions of Venus, our current one
has the highest peak and the most captivating close conjunction with a stellar
object - the Pleiades. The peak occurs
near the time of Venus's greatest eastern
elongation from the Sun - this year on
March 24th - and the Pleiades conjunction about a week and a half later.

Venus stands almost 44° above the
horizon at sunset for viewers at latitude
40° north later this month. The interval between sunset and Venus-set grows
to more than 4 hours in March. Venus
attains a greatest elongation of 46.1°
from the Sun on the American evening
of March 24th, although you might see
Venus appear more precisely half-lit in
your telescope quite a few days earlier
due to the cloudiness of its "terminator" (watch for and note which night
you see the terminator at its straightest). Venus is at perihelion (closest to
the Sun in space) on the American
evening of March 19th.
The disk of Venus grows from 19″ to
25″ wide this month, while the phase
of the disk shrinks from about 63%
to 48% lit. The brilliance of Venus
increases from magnitude -4.3 to -4.5

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. In the Far East, move the Moon halfway. The blue 10° scale bar is about
the width of your fist at arm's length.

Dawn, March 16 - 20
10°

45 minutes before sunrise

Sickle
Moon
Mar 7

Moon
Mar 17
Jupiter

Saturn

Regulus

LEO

CAPRICORNUS
Moon
Mar 19

Moon
Mar 8

Denebola

Looking East

MARCH 2 02 0 * SK Y & TELESCOPE

Mars
Moon
Mar 18

Cat's
Eyes
SAGITTARIUS

Moon
Mar 20

Looking Southeast

Moon
Mar 16

Looking South-Southeast

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Sky & Telescope - March 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - March 2020