Planet Scenes March 2023

		March 29 Venus has almost caught up with Uranus in eastern Aries and Mercury has climbed noticeably higher than Jupiter by this evening ~ Jupiter was barely visible in binoculars earlier in the evening but he's too low now to catch on a wide field image.
	March 26 Mercury is just beginning a nice apparition in the evening sky, which will be one of the best of the year since it's close to the spring equinox; here we catch it just to the lower right of the rapidly sinking Jupiter.
	March 22 Jupiter and the Moon gather for a close conjuction and we almost didn't see it owing to encroaching bad weather, but the clouds this evening ended up adding drama to the scene.
	March 19 Jupiter is sinking lower and lower into the sunset, so that we now barely see it in a dark sky.  Venus is now firmly in Aries as well as being north of the ecliptic; Uranus has also moved noticeably since the 15th.
	March 15 Two weeks after their great conjunction, Venus and Jupiter are widely separated and now for the first time, we see Uranus joining the scene at the very top of the frame.  Within a few weeks Mercury will join in at the bottom, replacing the soon-to-depart Jupiter.
		March 7 We enjoyed a clear evening with the full Moon out behind us as Venus and Jupiter continue to dazzle in the evening.
	March 5 Now four days after the conjunction, Venus and Jupiter are still close but not nearly as dramatic as they were in the lead-up to the event.  Thin clouds made for a less than ideal scene this evening.
			March 1 The Venus-Jupiter conjunction date has finally arrived.  This event is not as close as the previous two conjunctions in this series, because it keeps occurring a little later in the year and during Venus apparitions such as this (1975, 1983, 1991, 1999, 2007, 2015, 2023), it begins the year well south of the ecliptic but begins to curve back upward towards it in February and March, whereas Jupiter at this point in its orbit is well south of the ecliptic.  As a bonus, we have some beautiful images from the Cayman Islands courtesy of my friend Mike Menke.

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