Month's planets

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn form a planetary parade in the morning sky this month, while Venus makes a dazzling entrance in the evening

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn form a planetary parade in the morning sky this month

Mars, the Red Planet, is our Planet of the Month this month not because it is especially bright or easy to see, but because it will be taking part in a wonderful ‘planetary parade’ in the east before sunrise. Shining at a very respectable magnitude of 1.1 means Mars will be an easy naked-eye object, brighter than either of the stars Pollux or Deneb, so even if it wasn’t part of that parade it would be worth looking at in its own right.

At the start of March Mars will be on the western, or right end of a long line of three nakedeye planets, with Jupiter and Saturn down to its lower left. By 12 March the trio of worlds will have bunched up closer together to form an

Orion’s Belt-like trio in the pre-dawn southeastern sky. Three mornings later, on 18 March, the situation will have changed quite dramatically:

Mars will be shining very close to Jupiter – just three Moon widths away to its lower right – and a waning crescent Moon will be just two degrees away from the planetary pair. Grouped so close together, the three objects will make a stunning sight in the sky, one definitely worth looking at through a pair of binoculars, and a good chance to try out photographing it too – best results will be achieved with a DSLR on a tripod, but your phone’s camera should pick them up too.

By 20 March the Moon will have left the party, but Mars and Jupiter will have moved even closer together. Less than a degree – or two Moon widths – apart, the pair will be a stunning sight in binoculars or a telescope’s low-power eyepiece.

By 25 March the parade will look dramatically different again. Now Mars will be in the centre of the planetary parade, with Jupiter to its upper right and Saturn down to its lower left. All three worlds will be easily visible to the naked eye, and will look very attractive through binoculars before the brightening sky begins to wash them out.

As good as Mars will look during March, later this year Mars will be a lot more impressive. By the time it has moved into the evening sky it will be much closer to Earth, so it will look much brighter and higher too, an obvious orange-red ‘beacon’ in the sky, brighter than anything else around it. By then four missions should be on their way to Mars, one built by NASA, another by the European Space Agency, one from China and one from the United Arab Emirates. These will try to answer the question of if there ever was – or still is – life on the Red Planet.