Planet Scenes March 2022
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March 28 The Moon joins the scene this morning for a pretty conjunction with the planets; the ecliptic runs between Venus and the line formed by Saturn and Mars, so note how far south of the ecliptic plane the Moon is at this point! |
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March 27 This Sunday morning, March 27, the triangle made between Venus, Mars, and Saturn has shrunk noticeably and changed orientation, with Venus now closer to Saturn and leaving Mars behind. It will pass Saturn tomorrow, and will also finally appear lower in the sky than Mars when compared to the horizon sometime in the next few days as well. And for a change of pace, there are also some excellent sunspots to observe in the daytime! |
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March 22 On the 102nd anniversary of my Dad's birth, I celebrated by taking some pictures of the morning planet scene. He was intensely interested in the space program back in the 1960's and bought his first telescope, an RV-6, in 1969. His favorite targets were the Moon and planets, especially Saturn, and at the age of 6, seeing them as well as Mars and Jupiter through the telescope, sparked my lifelong interest in astronomy. |
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March 20 Although we had difficulty seeing Saturn on this morning due to low clouds off to the south, we can still see the movement of Venus and Mars through Capricornus over the last five days. Venus continues to pull away from Mars and is still high enough over the ecliptic that three days from now it will move into Aquarius for a few days before coming back into Capricornus as it passes north of Saturn on March 28. Today is the spring equinox and Venus also happens to be at greatest elongation, as detailed on Guy Ottewell's website! |
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March 18 Owing to rain the previous day, the morning dawned foggy here on the river, so we can only barely see the planets and stars aside from Venus of course. The arrangement of Venus, Mars, and Saturn is still discernible though. |
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March 15 Only two days after the below images, but from a different vantage point, we see the slightly changed geometry between Venus, Mars, and Saturn as Venus has moved noticeably in only these two days. On this Ides of March, Venus is still brilliant at magnitude -4.43, Mars at magnitude +1.17, and Saturn at magnitude +0.82. Venus should pass Saturn on March 28 while Mars passes the ringed planet on April 4. |
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March 13 After several weeks of warm, spring-like weather, central Virginia got one more reminder that it is still winter, with a day of snow and very cold temperatures; the next morning, March 13, dawned cold and clear so I was able to get a good view of the morning planet scene again, for the first time now including Saturn along with Venus and Mars. In the following weeks, Saturn will appear to rise to the upper right and join Mars while Venus begins to finally pull away from Mars. |
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March 7 On this Monday morning, the skies were mostly clear but with low clouds along the southern horizon. Nevertheless, we can see that Venus and Mars have moved into Capricornus and are drawing closer together owing to Venus gradually coming back down to the ecliptic. |
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March 2 The morning planet scene has of course not changed much from yesterday, but the view today was obtained a bit earlier so the background sky is darker and we can see more of the fainter stars, such as the small pair that Venus has just left behind; they were obscured yesterday. The second image is a wide-angle view including much of the summer Milky Way from the planets in the east to Antares and the head of Scorpius in the west. |
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March 1 Venus and Mars are still in Sagittarius, but moving closer to the border of Capricornus, which in this 35mm shot we can see is beginning to emerge from the twilight by showing its distinctive α and β pair of stars to the left of Venus. On this date, Venus is magnitude -4.55 and Mars has brightened to magnitude +1.25; they are just slightly over 5° apart, and Venus is still 4° 9' above the ecliptic. |
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