Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to be looking at the very end of February along with a quick look ahead to March. Normally, I take a look at the coming month without finishing up the previous month, I don’t normally pay too much attention to the final day of the month. However, with the parade of planets ongoing, a lot of people are saying it’s running from the 21st to the 28th, it may be worth looking at the 28th exactly. The parade has definitely been running for the past couple of nights here in Ireland, but I wanted to check how visible the parade of planets is on the very last night of February, before we take a look at some of the more exciting things that are going to come up in March itself.

We’ll begin by allowing the sky to get a little bit darker. Venus comes out nice and quick, of course Venus is the first planet to emerge whenever it is up. I know that Mercury is going to pop up over in the west somewhere and indeed it does once the sky darkens further. There’s Mercury and upon closer inspection, the Moon. The Moon is incredibly new here, just 0.7% illuminated. A little earlier as the sunsets and it might even be possible to see at just 0.6% illuminated. If you wanted to try and get an image of the Newest Moon, this could be a contender. That is a thing that people look for, as an astrophotography challenge, trying to catch the Newest Moon. This is just a tiny, tiny sliver of the Moon, and this time it is right next to Saturn as well. We will get back to Saturn, but for now we’ll focus on the tiny sliver of the Moon which is illuminated, along the western edge. The rest is really in darkness, or at least night time, which helps that little highlight that is the 0.6% of the Moon that’s actually lit by the Sun to stand out. It is very hard to see, so waiting until a little later brings the sliver to 0.7% of the Moon that is illuminated by the Sun. The rest of the Moon is technically in darkness, but illuminated by the orange yellow glow of sunset, and light reflected from the Earth, known as Earth glow as well. The Moon and Saturn are really close together, if only the sky was a little bit darker it could look quite nice, but from the city and with the sunset Saturn is very faint. As we push a little bit later, by the time Saturn is actually becoming visible to the eye, at least from here in Ireland, it’s likely to fall behind bushes or trees. It is also a fair distance below Mercury and that’s going to mean that it is closer to the brighter part of the sky, and we’re looking at it through more atmosphere, which does make things more difficult to see as well.

To remove the trees and bushes we’ll travel to a hypothetical zero horizon, to make things perfectly flat. This is impossible, the closest you will get to this is if you live near one of the big salt lakes, then you may get a pretty level horizon in at least some direction. The ocean is usually quite level, but nothing’s perfect, there’s always imperfections like clouds. As such, we never get a perfect, perfect view, but with a simulation we can simulate perfect. You can get close to a flat horizon, even if it isn’t truly perfect. From here the Moon is already very low, and seeing how dark we can leave things get, the orange glow of the Sun sticks with us as long as the Moon is above the horizon. It looks like Saturn might be just out of view to the naked eye for us here in Ireland, at least from the city. If you’re closer to the equator, you may be able to pull it off, and if you’re in the southern hemisphere, then you can refer back to one of my previous videos where we looked at the parade of planets from the south and saw how difficult it was and how the season, how the different season that we’re in on each hemisphere factors into that difficulty.

While we’re looking at things that are pretty much impossible, let’s get even more impossible and get rid of the atmosphere here entirely. This will cause the Moon to “jump”. The refraction of the atmosphere, the air itself, actually keeps the Moon visible in the sky for longer than it would be if it wasn’t for the air bending that light. With the atmosphere removed, we need to move back in time to bring the Moon back up above the horizon. That gives us the just barely not new anymore Moon, just after coming out from in front of the Sun. In true darkness, as if it was midnight rather than moments after sunset, we can really see the tiny silver sliver on the edge of the Moon. Of course, no atmosphere is truly impossible for us here on Earth, much more so than a flat horizon, so we won’t worry about it too much. Most importantly, if you did want to get an image of the Newest Moon, it looks like February 28th is a good night to do it. The parade of planets is still ongoing, the planets are technically still visible. We still have Saturn, just barely, it is technically above the horizon after the Sun sets, even if it’s going to be incredibly, incredibly difficult to see.

Luckily, as we leave February and move into March, Mercury is going to be even easier to see. Moving ahead to the 8th of March, this is the day of Mercury’s greatest elongation. By then, the Moon will be very close to Mars, and in fact over the early part of the month, as the Moon moves out from that incredibly close to the Sun position, it passes near enough to all of the planets. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s passing directly in front of any of them, It looks like the Moon is going to go just above Mars, rather than in front of Mars, but it doesn’t look like we’re getting an occultation in March, but that’s okay, we’re not always going to get an occultation every month.

Coming back to Mercury at its greatest elongation from the Sun, which means it’s still in the sky and clearly visible as the sky is really getting dark, even with an imperfect horizon with bushes and mountains in the way. Even at 7:30, Mercury’s still above the horizon. As long as it’s not cloudy, this is going to be one of the better chances to get a look at Mercury. Through a telescope it should look close to a half, a half Mercury just like a Half Moon. That’s a good indicator that we’re forming a right angled triangle with this object and the Sun, the Sun is illuminating our face and illuminating this portion of Mercury, the other part being in darkness. From the Half Mercury, over the course of the subsequent few days it’s going to come around in front of the Sun and disappear from our view once we’re moving up towards mid March.

The same thing has been happening, and will continue to happen, with Venus. If we take a closer look at Venus on the 28th, we’ll see a less than half full Venus. To see the half Venus we’ll need to move back in time. Venus reached its greatest elongation a couple of months ago back in January. Judging by Stellarium it was about mid January according to the phase of Venus, which isn’t the most accurate way to tell. As we move past that greatest elongation and further into the year, we can see we’re going to end up with Venus in front of the Sun as well. Both of these planets are disappearing over the early part of March, we are going to lose those planets from our sky. Of course, if you’re looking at Venus with a real sky, in the real sky, with a real telescope, you’ll still have to deal with a little bit of that light pollution from the sunset. Well, not light pollution really, it is natural light coming from the Sun, but it’s still going to interfere. Even if it is natural, it’s still going to get in the way.

Speaking of natural light getting in the way, we will move up to the Full Moon. I did want to see how close Mars and the Moon get in March just before the Full Moon, because we’re not getting an occultation but they are pretty close in the sky. If we move forward in time we should see them get even closer, just barely not occulting they end up very close indeed. This is very early in the morning of the 9th of March and we can see the Moon and the Mars there are very close together. We’ll move back in time because I do want to take a look at the Full Moon and we know that the Full Moon is going to be up at its highest pretty close to midnight. We’re looking at 99.9% full at our local midnight, and closer to sunrise we are going to get 100% full from here in Ireland and that. As we are getting 100% full here, we get just a little bit of the lunar eclipse.

I think I mentioned this already in a recent piece, but we are going to be getting some of a lunar eclipse from here in Ireland. Very early in the morning, around 5 o’clock in the morning on the 14th March, and we can see a good portion of the Earth’s shadow there blocking out part of the Moon. We are seeing a partial lunar eclipse, mostly a penumbra lunar eclipse, with a little bit of the Earths umbra. I do believe from other parts of the world the eclipse will be even more impressive, but we are going to take a look at that once we get a little bit later in March. We will take it back a little bit and see how it looks from the beginning here in Ireland, starting at just 4:00 in the morning. This gives us the Full Moon fully illuminated with nothing in the way. As we move ahead the edge of the Earth’s shadow, the penumbra, will move onto the Moon. Sometimes this is as eclipsed as a penumbral lunar eclipse will get, the Moon totally in a sort of pale half shadow. As we continue later we are getting a little bit of the Earths umbra, the darker sort of red shadow of the Earth. Eventually we get quite a lot of the umbra, and then it hits the horizon before reaching a total lunar eclipse. By removing the ground and continuing to follow the Moon, we can see how much more of that umbra, the actual shadow of the Earth, we would get from this latitude at a different longitude. It seems to get to pretty much a total lunar eclipse. It looks like the total lunar eclipse isn’t going to be visible from here in Ireland, not at its peak totality, just because it’s going under the horizon. It looks like for longitudes close to Ireland, on our latitude at longitudes nearby, you actually will get a total lunar eclipse, it’s just sinking below the trees and buildings for us here.

That is the upcoming lunar eclipse and of course there is a solar eclipse upcoming as well. It’s not really going to look like much from here in Ireland, and I believe I’ve checked this out in a recent piece as well. We’ll move forward to the New Moon and take a look at the morning sky. Once we’re later into March the sky will look quite different. We can see the summer triangle back up, nice and clear in the morning sky. We’ve also got Scorpius and Sagittarius well over the south, so we’re likely starting to get the Milky Way into a position where it will really look good. It also looks like we have Venus coming up in the morning, so Venus has looped its way around the Sun from the beginning of the month. As the Sun rises we have the Moon in front of the Sun, and this is the solar eclipse. Eclipses often come in pairs, if the Moon is directly behind the Earth causing a lunar eclipse, then there is a good chance that the Moon will end up directly in front of the Earth, causing a solar eclipse as well. From here in Ireland this is definitely only a partial solar eclipse, and not even a great partial, only about 70-80%. However, I do believe that this partial solar eclipse will look much closer to total, even if it isn’t total total, in other areas of the world. It should get up to 93% in some areas, so we are going to look at that as well as we get later into March.

Those are some of the big upcoming things. We’ve got a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse. The parade of planets is finishing, but Mercury will continue to look great. Of course we’ll have plenty more to look at over the course of March as well. I hope that you enjoyed this article, if you did then please do like it. If you enjoy this kind of content, then please do subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Hopefully, I’ll see you back here next time.