Bakersfield Night Sky — March 1, 2025
While Saturn has now sunk into the twilight glow too close to the sun to be seen in the evening sky on its way to solar conjunction on March 15, Mercury continues to climb upward away from the sun in the west to keep the planet parade going for a few more weeks. Mercury reaches greatest “elongation” (maximum angular separation from the sun) on March 8 and this evening elongation will be the best of the three that will happen in 2025. Through a combination of orbital geometries and seasonal positions of the sun, other evening elongations this year will have wider separations from the sun but not get as high above the horizon as the March 8 event. Mercury will be above the horizon for up to an hour and a half after sunset.
Tonight (March 1) a thin waxing crescent moon will be to the lower left of super-bright Venus, approximately three knuckles at arm’s length apart. Mercury will be a fist-width at arm’s length to the lower right of the moon. Venus is now moving in between Earth and the sun, so we’ll see Venus drop down closer to the horizon each succeeding night. On March 12, Venus and Mercury will be at the same altitude above the west horizon with Mercury to the left of Venus. They will probably just miss fitting within the same field of view of your binoculars.
Venus will be at “inferior conjunction” (right in between us and the sun) on March 22, leaving Jupiter and Mars to be the bright evening planets for the following few months. Jupiter will be above the head of Taurus and Mars will be in Gemini for the month of March.
The major astronomy event for this month is the total lunar eclipse on the night of March 13/14. The full moon will begin entering Earth’s umbra (region of total shadow) at 10:09 p.m. on March 13. The moon will be fully in the umbra between 11:26 p.m. (March 13) to 12:32 a.m. (March 14) with mid-eclipse at 11:59 p.m. How dark red or orange the totally-eclipsed moon will appear will depend on the global air quality but the top-left (northern) part of the moon will be brighter than the bottom-right part because the moon will be well above the centerline of the umbra.
The moon will be between Leo and Virgo the night of March 13/14, so at the start of the partial eclipse, look southeast about halfway up. At the start of totality, the moon will be higher up in the southeast and at the end of totality it will be almost due south and about two-thirds up to zenith. By 1:48 a.m. the show will be over with the end of the partial eclipse and the moon will be past the due south meridian line.
In my previous column I mentioned the worrisome possibility of a recently-discovered near-Earth asteroid called 2024 YR4 impacting Earth in December 2032. At the time I wrote the previous column, the probability was slightly over 1% chance of impact and the chance of impact rose to about 3% a week later when some more historical images were included in the analysis. However, now after many more observations of the asteroid that enabled us to fine-tune its orbital parameters, we have effectively removed the concern. At the time I write this, there is just 1 in 20,000 odds of impact. Whew! You can keep track of any new Near-Earth Objects of concern at NASA/JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.
The March shows at the William M Thomas Planetarium are: “Moon Base” on March 6, “Mesmerica” on March 7+8, and “Mars One-Thousand-One” on March 20. I hope you’ll be able to come to one of more of the shows!
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Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at Bakersfield College
Author of the award-winning website www.astronomynotes.com
