Watching Distant Galaxies

March’s planet show begins with a bang as our solar system’s two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, have a close conjunction in the western sky on Wednesday evening, March 1. Over subsequent nights, Venus continues its climb higher in the evening sky—where it remains for the next few months—while Jupiter continues sinking lower as it disappears into twilight by month’s end. Before it does so, however, it has a conjunction with Mercury on the evening of Monday, March 27, then giving a modest evening sky showing early next month.

The red planet, Mars, is also prominent in the evening sky this month, although it has faded somewhat since its approach to Earth last year. Throughout March it is high in the western sky as darkness falls and sets roughly two hours after midnight.

Our solar system’s remaining bright planet, Saturn, begins emerging into the dawn this month following its passage on the far side of the sun in mid-February. By late March Saturn rises shortly after the beginning of twilight, and climbs higher into the morning sky over the next few months.

During March, the Milky Way—the combined light of multitudes of distant stars in the plane of our galaxy—is visible in our western sky at night.

However, as the night progresses, take a look away from our galaxy into intergalactic space. In the constellation of Virgo and the adjacent constellation of Coma Berenices is a large cluster of galaxies. Dozens of these objects are visible through small- to moderate-sized backyard telescopes. The Virgo galaxy cluster is the nearest large cluster to our own galaxy, located roughly 55 million light-years away.

The Virgo galaxy cluster has a much closer interloper this month, as the largest main-belt asteroid, Ceres, travels through it. Ceres will be at opposition—directly opposite the sun in the sky—on March 21. The asteroid is bright enough to detect with ordinary binoculars, and passes close to several of the Virgo cluster galaxies as it makes its passage through the cluster— including almost directly over the galaxy M100, one of the brightest and largest of the Virgo galaxies, on March 26.