My first Magazine Sky & Telescope - 03.2019

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 Decem- ber 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 mid- northern 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 min- utes 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 47

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