What’s New in the Month of March? Venus ascends toward the heavens while Jupiter descends toward the sun, and the little planet has the same name as the cereal you eat for breakfast. After coming into such close conjunction on March 1st, Venus and Jupiter began the month of March appearing unusually close to one another in the evening sky. But they swiftly parted ways and went their separate ways.
Throughout the next few months, Venus will continue to move higher in the sky each night, while Jupiter will continue to move toward the Sun. As the month progresses, the enormous planet will be seen descending lower and lower in the sky each night, marking its final appearance as an evening object.
In May, you can look for it in the sky before morning beside Saturn. On the 23rd and 24th, a couple of hours after sunset, you’ll discover the Moon as a stunningly thin crescent hanging just below, and the next night above, blazing bright Venus.
On the 25th, Venus will be hanging just above the Moon. The next day, on the 25th, the Moon continues its ascent higher into the sky, eventually coming to rest that evening just next to the dazzling Pleiades star cluster. Depending on where you live in the world, March marks the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and the beginning of fall in the Southern Hemisphere. This makes the month of March a prime period for either growing or harvesting crops. Hence, now would be a good time to look for the planet that was named after a mythical goddess who was associated with agriculture, grains, and lush places.
This month, the minor planet Ceres is in opposition, which means that it is positioned precisely on the side of the Earth that is facing away from the Sun. When a planet is at or near its perihelion, which is when it is approximately its closest point to Earth, this is the optimum time to try to observe it when it is at its brightest. The primary asteroid belt stretches from Mars to Jupiter, and the largest object in that belt is Ceres.
Yet, its width is only roughly 600 miles, making it significantly less expansive than our own moon. Its surface is covered with craters that appear to have been caused by impacts, and here and there you can see brilliant salt deposits that provide a clue to the existence of slushy, brackish ice beneath the surface. In point of fact, the Dawn satellite sent by NASA discovered that Ceres may have as much as one quarter of water ice on the interior. Because Ceres is now too dim to be seen with the naked eye, you will need binoculars or a small telescope in order to spot it in the sky during the month of March.
By approximately 9 o’clock in the evening, look to the southeast to see the constellation Leo, the Lion. The brilliant star Regulus, which appears bluish-white. Your attention should be drawn first to the lion’s heart. After that, turn your gaze around 25 degrees to the east to locate Denebola, which stands for the lion’s tail. From this vantage point, Ceres ought to be approximately eight or nine degrees further east than Denebola. Since it looks like a dim point of light resembling a star, when Ceres and other objects like it were initially found in the early 19th century, scientists gave them the name “asteroids,” which is derived from the Greek word for “star-like.” Together with Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake, Ceres has been designated as a dwarf planet since the year 2006.
This places it in the same category as the other small worlds in our solar system. No matter where you stand on the “planet versus dwarf planet” status debate for worlds like Ceres and Pluto, it is essential to keep in mind that our way of thinking about the various families of objects that make up our solar system has changed over the course of time and most likely will continue to change as we continue to explore and learn more about them. This is something that is really important to keep in mind. As you venture outside this month to observe the night sky above your home planet, we hope you have the opportunity to look for the asteroid Ceres.
