Month’s planets

The Red Planet remains an easy target, while Uranus presents itself as an interesting sight

Comparing how Mars looks now to how it looked last autumn, when it was at opposition and much closer to the Earth, is like comparing a candle to a car headlight, but the Red Planet is still an easy naked-eye object, and it’s in a very interesting and busy part of the night sky, too. As March draws to a close, Mars is shining at magnitude +1.2, making it still as bright as the star Pollux, but strikingly fainter than the sky’s brightest stars, which it was outshining last October.

At the start of our observing period Mars will become visible to the naked eye soon after sunset as an orange-hued star just to the upper right of the V-shaped Hyades star cluster, which represents the sharp horns of Taurus (the Bull), and not far from the red star Aldebaran. The two will be shining at roughly the same brightness, making a very attractive pairing in the sky. Mars will remain visible all through the evening before setting at around 01:00.

As the days pass Mars will move towards Taurus’ boundary with Gemini, drifting slowly away from the Hyades and Aldebaran, and fading too. By mid-April Mars will have left Aldebaran and the Hyades far behind, and will have almost reached the border with Gemini. Hope for clear skies around that time, because Mars will be joined in the evening twilight by a lovely young crescent Moon. On the evening of 16 April Mars will lie eight degrees to the Moon’s upper left. By the following evening the two will have swapped positions, so the Moon will lie to Mars’ upper left instead. On both of these evenings the pair will look beautiful through binoculars, and the camera on your phone should photograph them easily.

By the end of April Mars won’t be setting until around 02:00, but it will have faded to magnitude +1.5, making it only slightly brighter than the stars of Orion’s Belt, but it will still be an attractive naked-eye sight. If your naked-eye views of Mars are disappointing this month, you’ll be able to enjoy rather more dramatic views of it through the many cameras being carried by the Perseverance rover, which will be posted on NASA websites for everyone to enjoy.