Big change during March to summer
MARCH is a transitional period. We’re leaving the true darkness of winter behind and heading toward the brighter nights of summer.
The arrival of the Spring Equinox on March 20 marks the point where the day and night are roughly equal all over the Earth.
The number of hours of daylight at our location will increase sharply, and the further north you are the more dramatic the change will be.
Those who live above the Arctic Circle can see daylight advance by almost an hour-and-a half toward the end of the month.
The clocks move forward an hour at 1am on Sunday, March 26 and we’ll then stay
with British Summer Time for the next seven months. With the natural expansion of daylight and the clocks changing forward, twilight will begin to last until 10pm by the end of the month.
It does make astronomy a bit more of a late-night experience.
The planet Venus has been putting on a brilliant show in the evening sky for the past couple of months but we will lose it from the night sky this month.
At the start of March, Venus will still be quite prominent during the early evening. But it will quickly sink into the twilight glow towards the middle of the month, passing between the Earth and the Sun.
While this makes it an interesting telescope and binocular object (Venus will appear as a thin crescent shape), this phenomenon also then makes it mostly impossible to observe as it becomes hidden by the glare of the Sun.
The planet Mars will stick around low in the western sky but it too will begin to get lost in the twilight haze before sinking beneath the horizon.
However, the great planet Jupiter will become more prominent this month. As March wears on, it will be visible in the south-eastern sky as a bright point of light in the late evening.
Beneath Jupiter will lie the bright star Spica.
Keep a look out on March 14 after 11pm, when the just-past-full Moon will appear close by. The Full
Moon itself will be on the night of March 12. Toward the end of the month, looking out across the southern sky will give you a view of the constellations of Leo and Virgo.
Leo is fairly easy to locate – look out for a shape of six stars that vaguely resembles a back-to-front question mark with the bright star Regulus at its base.
This is a part of the sky that features a large volume of galaxies that form the “Virgo Supercluster”.
This a vast grouping of some 2000 galaxies spread out over an area around 100million light years across.
Remember, just by looking up at the night sky you are looking out from the Earth across the vast cosmos of which we are a part.