For March 2025, the waxing crescent moon passes just south of Venus on March 1st, with Mercury just below them. The first quarter moon will pass Jupiter on March 5-6. Daylight Savings time will begin on Sunday, March 8th, so spring the clocks forward an hour. The waxing gibbous moon will pass red Mars in the northeast on the same evening, but no occultation for us this month. Instead this month, the occultation involves the earth’s shadow covering the full moon for a total lunar eclipse starting in the late evening of March 13th, but totality occurring in the early hours of March 14th.
Just before midnight locally on Thursday evening, you will notice the SE limb of the moon growing slightly darker as the penumbral phase begins, but for the naked eyes, the real show will start at 1:09 a.m. when the dark umbral shadow makes a bite out of the SE edge of the moon. By 2 60% of the moon will be in our shadow, and the total phase begins at 2:26. For the next hour, the moon revolves its own diameter eastward through our circular shadow.
Note the earth is 4x larger than its satellite, so you can easily see our shadow swallow up the whole moon with plenty to spare in this eclipse. This was used by Aristarchus to correctly argue that we lived on a sphere four times larger than the moon, which revolved around a sun at least 20X (really 100X) bigger than our planet Earth, which we in turn revolved around once a year, the origin of the heliocentric model later popularized by Copernicus.
The really colorful phase, with all the direct sunlight blocked by our globe, begins at 2:26 a.m., and as it approaches, note while the main umbral shadow is reddish, the leading edge, passing through our ozone layer which absorbs UV and red, transmits a beautiful bluish leading edge for a few minutes. The greatest eclipse will occur at 3 a.m., and the moon will move into the following edge of our umbral shadow at 3:32 a.m.. The moon will again be fully lit by the direct sunlight at 4:48 a.m..
The Vernal Equinox occurs on March 22nd to begin spring in the northern hemisphere. Days and nights will be equally 12 hours long, and the sun will rise due east and set due west on that day. The last quarter moon is on March 22nd, rising at midnight. The new moon occurs on March 29th.
Mercury is well placed below Venus in the evening sky as March begins. It and Venus get together in the western sky on March 12th, when Venus, rapidly overtaking us to pass between us and the Sun on March 22, lies 6 degrees north of much fainter Mercury in the dusk, about 45’ after local sunset. Both are lost in the sun’s glare in a week. Note the size and phase of Venus change greatly in the first three weeks. As March begins, Venus is still 13% sunlit, but when it passes Mercury two weeks later, it is down to a very slender but now closer and larger crescent, only 5% lit. It passes 8.4 degrees north of the Sun at inferior conjunction on March 22nd, and might be spotted on the other side of the Sun, in the dawn sky on the following morning, only 1% sunlit. By month’s end, it is easy to see in the dawn, now 2% sunlit. On the 29th, the very slender waning lunar crescent and equally slender Venus will both be above the eastern
horizon about 30’ before sunrise.
Mars was at opposition as 2025 began, and is now being left behind by the Earth. But it is still close enough to reveal telescopic details as its seasons to are changing. Like us, it has a tilt of about 23 degrees, and it too has equinox presently, with its equator facing the Sun. Often in spring and fall, the sublimation of the warming cap as the sun rises, while the condensation of carbon dioxide at the chilling winter cap, will cause an atmospheric storm dwarfing our local 10" snowfall and shroud the whole planet in a dust storm for a month or more! These are tough times for our rovers on the surface, since they depend on such sunlight to power their solar batteries, and some are thus lost!
Jupiter is still well placed for viewing right after sunset, but will get lower in the NW as we head to April. Its Great Red Spot is still obvious in larger scopes. Alas, Saturn is now lost in the Sun’s glare. On March 23rd, we could have seen its rings at their thinnest, edge on as seen from Earth, but the Sun is in front of it now! When it does come out into the dawn sky in April, for the next several months, we will look up under the ring plane to see the dark side of the rings from Earth!
The constellation Cassiopeia makes a striking W in the NW. South of Cassiopeia is Andromeda’s hero, Perseus. Between him and Cassiopeia is the fine Double Cluster, faintly visible with the naked eye and two fine binocular objects in the same field. Perseus contains the famed eclipsing binary star Algol, where the Arabs imagined the eye of the gorgon Medusa would lie. It fades to a third its normal brightness for six out of every 70 hours. .
At Perseus’ feet for the famed Pleiades cluster; they lie about 400 light-years distant, and over 250 stars are members of this fine group. East of the seven sisters is the V of stars marking the face of Taurus the Bull, with bright orange Aldebaran as his eye. The V of stars is the Hyades cluster, older than the blue Pleiades, but about half their distance. Yellow Capella, a giant star the same temperature and color as our much smaller Sun, dominates the overhead sky in the northwest. It is part of the pentagon on stars making up Auriga, the Charioteer.
East of Auriga, the twins, Castor and Pollux highlight the Gemini; it is directly above us as darkness falls in early March. UWF alumni can associate the pair with Jason and the Golden Fleece legend, for they were the first two Argonauts to sign up on his crew of adventurers. Mars and the Moon make a equilateral triangle with Castor and Pollux on the evening of March 8th.
South of Gemini, Orion is the most familiar winter constellation, dominating the southern sky at dusk. The reddish supergiant Betelgeuse marks his eastern shoulder, while blue-white supergiant Rigel stands opposite on his west knee. How bright does Betelgeuse appear to you tonight? In 2019-20, this famed supergiant had expanded and cooled, forming a dust envelope that has darkened much of its southern hemisphere it to less than a quarter its normal brightness in visible light. Now the dust has dissipated, and it is back at its normal brightness as the alpha star of Orion again. Just south of the belt, hanging like a sword downward, is M-42, the Great Nebula of Orion, an outstanding binocular and telescopic stellar nursery.
In the east are the hunter’s two faithful companions, Canis major and minor. Procyon is the bright star in the little dog, and rises minutes before Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Sirius dominates the SE sky as darkness falls. At 8 light years distance, Sirius is the closest star we can easily see with the naked eye from West Florida. When Sirius is highest, along our southern horizon look for the second brightest star, Canopus, getting just above the horizon and sparkling like an exquisite diamond as the turbulent winter air twists and turns this shaft of starlight, after a trip of about 200 years!
To the northeast, look for the bowl of the Big Dipper rising, with the top two stars, the pointers, giving you a line to find Polaris, the Pole Star. If you take the pointers of the Big Dipper’s bowl to the south, you are guided instead to the head of Leo the Lion rising in the east, looking much like the profile of the famed Sphinx. The bright star at the Lion’s heart is Regulus, the "regal star". The folk wisdom that "March comes in like a Lion" probably refers to the head of Leo rising just after sunset in early March eastern twilight.
If you follow the handle of the Big Dipper to the south, by 10 p.m. you will be able to "arc to Arcturus", the brightest star of Spring and distinctly orange in color. Its color is an indication of its uniqueness. Its large speed and direction through the Milky Way suggests it was not formed with our Galaxy, but is a recent capture from the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, a smaller satellite galaxy now being assimilated by our huge spiral galaxy. Many of its lost stars, like Arcturus, follow a band across the sky at about a 70-degree angle to our galactic plane. Arcturus is at the tail of kite shaped Bootes, the celestial bear driver chasing the two bears from his flocks.
