Astronomy Page, March 2002

South Auckland/Counties Chapter

Stargazing Page

Looking at the night sky, March

Not everyone is crazy about the stars, but almost everybody looks at the sky sometimes, and wonders what a particular bright star or planet might be.
This page might be helpful to anyone who would like to know more about the Southern sky.

This Month:
Southern Cross
Evening Planets
Morning Planets
Artificial Satellites
Meteor Showers

Southern Cross
Have you seen the Southern Cross yet? The map below shows the night sky at 9 pm on the 1st of March looking due South. The Southern Cross is high in the South-West, and is circled in green here. During the night the constellation will follow an arc in the sky shown by the red circle, travelling clockwise. The Southern Cross is circumpolar, that is to say, it never sets when seen from New Zealand.

Auckland Sky 2100 hrs 1 March 2002
The curve at the bottom of the map is the horizon, and the Zenith (overhead) is at the top.
Map created with an evaluation version of Skymap. To download your own copy of Skymap, click here.

Evening Planets This is the evening sky at the beginning of March, looking exactly North-West. You can see three bright planets in this one view. The brightest, on the right, is Jupiter, just 'in' the constellation of Gemini. Next is Saturn, very close to the beautiful open star cluster of the Hyades, in the constellation of Taurus. Above Taurus is Orion (the Hunter) standing on his head in the Southern Hemisphere.

Finally, on the left, is Mars, which appears reddish in colour. Mars is moving slowly back across the sky towards Saturn at the moment, and by the end of the month the planets will seem to be equally spaced in the sky. But as the sky changes through the month, Mars will become more difficult to see, as it sets earlier in the evening.

If you look at Jupiter or Saturn with a small telescope, or a good pair of binoculars, you may get a good view of the moons of Jupiter (4 of them, like beads on a wire) and the rings of Saturn. Well worth a look!

Auckland Sky 21 hrs 1 March 2002
The curve at the bottom of the map is the horizon, and the Zenith (overhead) is at the top.
Map created with an evaluation version of Skymap. To download your own copy of Skymap, click here.

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Morning Planets
There are no bright planets to see in the morning sky during March.
Mercury rises just before the Sun later in the month, but is very hard to spot.

Artificial Satellites A lot of artificial satellites pass over our heads every day (and night of course). If you are out on any clear evening, or in the dawn, the chances are you could spot a satellite moving steadily through the stars. It might even be the International Space Station, or a Shuttle. If you want to know when to look for a particular satellite, you could use the 'Tools' menu in Skymap version 6. Alternatively, look at this website: http://www.heavens-above.com/

Meteor Showers "Meteor" is the proper name for a "Shooting Star" or "Falling Star", and each one is really only a small bit of dust falling into the earth's atmosphere from outer space. But they look neat, and you can usually see one after only a few minutes on a dark, clear night. Sometimes they come in regular swarms or showers (they tend to follow comets around) and appear regularly. See this table for dates of some well-known showers

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This page last updated 24th February 2002
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