Show Notes
March Moon Phases:
Moon at Perigee March 2 First Quarter: March 7 Full Moon: March 14 Moon at Apogee March18 > Last Quarter March 22 New Moon: March 29 Moon at Perigee again on March 30
Evening Skies:
Mercury is very low in the evening twilight in the West. (binocs recommended but only after sunset) and Mercury will return to morning skies in April and will be quite nice then. Venus in the early evening twilight is very low in the West (and as a fine crescent in telescopes) … and will disappear from us by the end of the first week of March, and then will re-appear in the East as the ‘Morning Star’ in April. Jupiter is in the north west all night and best viewed around midnight. Nice new storms can be picked out in telescopes in the equatorial belt. Mars can still be seen in the West Uranus at mag 5.8 is still visible Saturn returns to evening skies in late March
Highlights:
1 March: Saturn and Mercury near to thin crescent Moon (2° apart for Mercury) very low in evening twilight, will require binoculars. 2 March: Crescent Moon near crescent Venus very low in evening twilight (5°) 6 March: Waxing Moon near Jupiter in evening twilight (6°) 9 March: Waxing Moon near Mars in evening sky (5°), Moon close to Pollux 14 March: Occultation of bright star Beta Virginis around midnight 20 March: Earth at Equinox 21 March: Occultation of bright star Antares just after midnight behind moon
Astrophotography Challenge: The T Coronae Borealis Nova. The challenge is to capture a Nova before and after it blows! This Nova is ‘overdue’ so all eyes are on it!
Ian’s Tip: use 1sec stacks
T Coronae Borealis last brightened in 1946, and astronomers initially predicted it would brighten again by September 2024. It's a variable star in Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, a backward-C-shaped constellation east of Boötes.
T Coronae Borealis, dubbed the “Blaze Star” and known to astronomers simply as “T CrB,” is a binary system nestled in the Northern Crown constellation some 3,000 light-years from Earth. The system is comprised of a dense white dwarf – an Earth-sized remnant of a dead star with a mass comparable to that of our Sun – and an ancient red giant slowly being stripped of hydrogen by the relentless gravitational pull of its hungry neighbour.
Ian’s Tangent: Sky literacy, or lack thereof, as exemplified by ‘drone sightings’ in the US and amplified by the Governor of Maryland. We also discuss easy pathways to develop better sky literacy.
More from Astronomy Astrophiz Podcast
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Is dark matter finally showing itself? In this episode of Astrophiz, Dr Sophia Gad-Nasr — particle cosmologist, science communicator, and creator of @AstropartiGirl — returns for her second appearance on the show (her first was Episode 90, back in 2019) to unpack the tantalising 2.6-sigma signal detected by the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment, buried deep underground in South Dakota.
Dr Ian 'Astroblog' Musgrave returns with your essential guide to the September night sky — Venus at its greatest brilliancy (mag -4.5), the Moon's occultation of Antares, and Mercury lining up with Venus and Spica at dusk.
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