For March, the moon is waning crescent just west of Saturn on the morning of March 1st, and then just west of Venus the following morning. It is new on March 6th. The waxing crescent passes south of Mars in the evening sky on March 11th. First quarter moon is March 14th, and the Full Moon, the Grass Moon, is on the same date, March 20 as the Vernal Equinox, the beginning of Spring. The equinox is at 4:58 P.M., while the full moon is at 8:43 P.M..

As the Sunday following the Full Moon following the Vernal Equinox is the date of Easter, this should make Sunday March 24th Easter. But it isn’t! The ecclesiastical Easter will fall on April 21, 2019, whereas the astronomical Easter will take place March 24. In my research, I found the following; “For simplicity’s sake, the Church has set a fixed date for the equinox, March 21, though astronomically, the vernal equinox may also occur on the 20th. The paschal full Moon always falls on the 14th day of a lunar month; because ancient calculations (made in 325 a.d.) did not take into account certain lunar motions, it may differ slightly from the actual full Moon date.” Yes, it is indeed confusing, especially this year! The waning gibbous moon is just east of Jupiter in the dawn sky on March 27th. The moon is last quarter on March 28th. The waning crescent is east of Saturn on March 29th. On the 31st, it lies just west of Venus on the dawn horizon, with both rising about an hour before sunrise.

Mars is the only evening planet, in the SW sky. Ir passes below the Pleaides cluster at month’s end. In the morning sky, Jupiter is in Ophiuchus, northeast of bright red Antares in Scorpius. Saturn is east of the teapot of Sagittarius, and Venus still closer to the Sun in Capricorn. Venus will go behind the sun in a few weeks, to emerge in the evening sky by late summer.

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, as a larger but cooler orange giant covers about 80% of the smaller but hotter and thus brighter companion as seen from Earth. 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 (think Ben Hur). Several nice binocular Messier open clusters are found in the winter milky way here. 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.

South of Gemini, Orion is the most familiar winter constellation, dominating the southern sky at dusk. The reddish supergiant Betelguese marks his eastern shoulder, while blue-white supergiant Rigel stands opposite on his west knee. 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. The bright diamond of four stars that light it up are the trapezium cluster, one of the finest sights in a telescope and among the youngest known stars.

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. Here it sits unmoving 30 degrees high in on our northern sky locally. 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.

If you follow the handle of the Big Dipper to the south, by 9 p.m. you will be able to “arc to Arcturus”, the brightest star of Spring and distinctly orange in color. It 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. Spike south then to Spica in Virgo. But stop off on this arc just below the end star of the handle, and you will find our featured deep sky object, the famed Whirlpool Galaxy, M-51. This view of the colliding galaxies shows how this first galaxy whose spiral shape was observed in 1845 appears in our larger scopes at our deep sky gazes. Our own Milky Way is now interacting with three neighboring smaller galaxies; image how complicated we look from the same top on vantage point!