Caoimhín's Content

Today we are going to be looking at some conjunctions, some close conjunctions and even closer, that are happening over the course of the month of March. Just before we take a look ahead to those, we’re going to get rid of the atmosphere and the ground so we can take a look at the Moon on the opposite side of the planet.

We’re here on the third of March, this piece should be going live at 6 o’clock UTC, whereas the lunar eclipse that happened on this date, on the third, would have happened back at almost 12 o’clock UTC. That would be pretty close to the end of the eclipse, if we move back a little bit further, back to 11 o’clock UTC, that’s about the time that the lunar eclipse began. That’s for UTC, our local time in Ireland for most of the year, but on the opposite side of the planet in the middle of the Pacific, the local time that this eclipse would be happening at was very close to midnight. It would have been at slightly different times if you’re either side of the Pacific, in Asia or in North America. That is the total lunar eclipse, we’ve already taken a look at that eclipse, the last post on this website was all about that particular total lunar eclipse. There will be another lunar eclipse, not quite total, coming up later in the year and of course a solar eclipse as well. I hope you got to see the lunar eclipse, the total lunar eclipse, that just happened today. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, you can take a look back at the previous post and get an idea of what it would have looked like.

We’re moving into nighttime for this evening and just as the Sun is setting Saturn is visible just above the sunset, and Venus is out there as well. If we come back a little bit earlier in the evening we might catch Venus, visible at just after 6:30. Venus and Saturn are up tonight, but in a few days they will be closer together. Looking forward to the sixth, Venus and Saturn end up very close together. Unfortunately, with bushes or trees in the way, you might not catch them both at the same time. For this particular conjunction, or really set of conjunctions, you do want to be down at the coast or on top of a tall building or mountain, somewhere where you won’t have anything blocking your horizon.

Even with the sky completely clear, we’re only seeing Venus and Saturn with the naked eye. On the 7th, Venus and Saturn are pretty close together, they’re still very close together on the 8th, and then they start moving away from each other. Really on the 8th is the best conjunction that you will see with your eyes. However, back on the 7th, if we take a much closer look, Neptune is there as well. So we’ve got a pretty close conjunction of three objects in the sky. Venus and Neptune are having quite a close conjunction, with the conjunction of Saturn and Venus being a little bit more distant. If we take a look at where Neptune is, pulling back just a little bit to see Venus as well, they are pretty close on the 7th, and on the 6th Venus seems to be just on the other side of Neptune. So this means that this conjunction, what we’re seeing as just a conjunction here in Ireland, would be a closer conjunction from other locations around the world. If we move back into daytime for us here in Ireland, with no atmosphere so we can still see the planets, we get a very close conjunction between Venus and Neptune, they’re practically on top of each other in the sky. That very close conjunction is happening at 11 o’clock UTC, so again, close to midnight if you’re in the Pacific. If you’re down in the Pacific around the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you will be able to see a much closer version of the same conjunction.

Venus will be just after moving a little bit further ahead in its orbit by the time it’s visible for us here in Ireland, hours and hours later, moving the two planets apparent positions further apart. At just about 7:30 everything is still above the horizon for us, but with a little bit of glow from sunset still making things a bit more difficult to see. As we move ahead to the 8th, Venus moves kind of up and away from Saturn, it’s not as close to Saturn at any point as it gets to Neptune, so the conjunction between Venus and Saturn won’t be as close as the conjunction between Venus and Neptune. I have a feeling that Neptune’s pretty close to being on the ecliptic and Saturn is maybe a little bit off, but it’s very hard to tell. All of the planets, even though they roughly follow the ecliptic, none of them exactly follow the ecliptic, they all appear a little bit off at different times of their years and our year. That’s Venus and Saturn at sunset. There will be, for some locations on Earth, another conjunction happening at sunrise, but that’s only going to be visible from certain locations on Earth.

For now, we’re going to move forward to a conjunction between the Moon, Jupiter, and Pollux in Gemini. On the 26th, we’ll have Jupiter, the Moon and Pollux in a straight line. That is how they will appear just as the Sun is setting, and by the 26th Venus has gotten a lot easier to see, it’s much further from the Sun at sunset. It’s also setting a little further north. Really the sunset has moved a little bit north bushes because we’re continuing to move towards summertime. We are looking at the sky, just starting to get dark, still not truly dark at 8 o’clock. Taking a look up at the Moon, Jupiter and Pollux. As the Sun is going down, they are pretty much in a straight line, but if we follow them across the sky until they set, they’re no longer in line. I’ve used, more or less, this exact same conjunction before as a good example of how much the Moon moves even in the course of just one night. If you can go out at sunset and go out again just a few hours later, even about 1 o’clock, the Moon has noticeably moved in the space of just a couple of hours because the Moon does move quite fast, definitely quite fast compared to the planets and the stars in our sky. In general it’s a particularly good view of the Moon on the 26th. It’s just past a Half Moon, so we can see a lot of the cracks and craters. The perfect Half Moon is on the 25th, so on the 26th it’s just a little bit wider. All of the shape that I call the football player on the Moon is visible, with the Sea of Tranquility. It’s a great time to look at the Moon and it’s in this wonderful position right in between Pollux and Jupiter, so we have this nice straight line of bright recognizable objects.

The Moon is going to have a close conjunction with Regulus a little bit later in the month as well. This motion of the Moon across the sky is another great example of something roughly following the ecliptic. If we come back to almost the start of the month, the Moon moves from pretty close to Venus, up through Aries, up into Taurus and then across into Gemini. The Moon is just below Auriga, seemingly above Taurus, but this is still the top of Taurus. Even though the Hyades and the Pleiades are what we might recognize as Taurus, Taurus continues up above the Hyades, where the Moon is on the 24th. Then it comes through Gemini on the 26th, and then right next to Regulus on the 29th. I believe something very similar to the close conjunction between Venus and Neptune is happening here. We’re seeing the Moon just a little bit past Regulus at just almost 9 o’clock. As we move forward, getting later in the night, the Moon will continue drifting away from Regulus. However if we come back, for us here in Ireland it’s just as the sky gets dark enough for it to be visible, Regulus is just peeking out from the Moon. Regulus will be sort of revealed by the Moon just as the sky gets dark for us here in Ireland, just after 8 o’clock. This is still quite a bright time, so Regulus wouldn’t really be visible to the naked eye for us here in Ireland. However, if you are in a different location, that occultation of Regulus, not just a conjunction but an occultation, is going to look great. By the 29th we’ve gone into summertime here in Ireland, so we’re now at UTC +1 instead of UTC. That’s an unfortunate quirk of daylight savings, making everything a little bit harder to track, time wise,

Moving forward to morning time, we’ve got our last conjunction. From Ireland you might catch Mercury popping up just ahead of the sunrise. Mars is in there as well, and I pointed this out in a recent piece, they are both right there on the same side of the Sun. Also, by nearly the end of March, we’ve also moved around the Sun to such a degree that we’re seeing Saturn on the opposite side of the Sun to where we were seeing it earlier in the month. That is mostly down to the Earth’s motion, Saturn moves very slowly, so it doesn’t contribute as much to that changing position. Coming back earlier in the month, Mercury and Mars get pretty close together, quite close together there on the 15th. They’re also quite close to the Sun, so to see this we’re going to have to go pretty much to the equator. I say pretty much because we are now almost in northern summer. The 15th is of course before the equinox on the 20th, but we’re still very close to northern summer. As such, we would expect the subsolar point, the area on the Earth that’s directly under the Sun, to actually be a little bit off of the equator. The subsolar point won’t be very far from the equator, we’re not all the way into midsummer yet, but not as close to the equator as you might think. We’re going to go into West Africa, that should bring us close enough, though we may want to go a little bit further. When we turn back on the atmosphere, Mercury and Mars are still tilted to the south, barely briefly visible.

We do need to go closer to the equator, to exactly on the equator. Just by changing latitude, Mars comes into view, hinting that it would be visible to the naked eye, as does Mercury a little earlier in the morning. That gives us Mercury and Mars on the 15th, quite close together, only visible when they’re very close to the horizon and only visible from close to the equator. Now we’re going to move south of the equator as well, and that makes the planets appear more vertically above the horizon, thanks to the way that the Earth is tilted and where the Sun is actually shining. Mercury and Mars are visible further from the horizon when we are a little bit south of the equator. It should be particularly good view for anyone at 18 degrees south, you should get a pretty good view of Mercury and Mars in the morning.

Unfortunately for us here in Ireland, that’s not going to be possible, they’re too close to the sunrise, the angle makes it impossible for us to see. At least you got a description of it here, and thankfully the other conjunctions are visible from Ireland. The occultation between the Moon and Regulus, we’ll only see it as a conjunction here in Ireland, but it will be a particularly close one. Even coming up to sunrise on the 30th the Moon is still just there next to Regulus. We will get to see the Moon and Regulus being very close together, it almost looks like an occultation from here in Ireland, but it will be an occultation from other areas around the world. We can see Jupiter and Pollux and the Moon forming that nice straight line, and if you are close enough to the coast, if you have a flat enough horizon, then you should be able to catch the close conjunction between Venus, Saturn and Neptune, even if only Venus is actually reasonably easy to see.

I hope you get to see some of those conjunctions. For the ones that you aren’t able to see, I’m glad you got an idea of them here. If you enjoyed this piece then please do like it, and if you like this kind of content then please subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel. Thank you very much for watching and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.