Spring

The most important thing about this week must be on Sunday which is the first day of spring, the equinox occurs at 9:32 am when the axis of the earth is exactly perpendicular to the ecliptic, in English the orbital plane, and by 9:33 it will be tentatively pointing toward the Sun again. And because we’re right on top of the vernal equinox the days are lengthening faster now than at any other time of the year. The rate of change will peak on the 21st then slow down to midsummer’s day when it stops dead and reverses when we begin the inexorable plunge to mid winter. But that’s another 3 months yet.

We may be able to just swing all 5 naked eye planets this week, but I warn you now it’s iffy and it means very little sleep. Mercury sets at 6:30 just behind the sun, but it may be visible in binoculars with a clear eastern horizon over the sea, so this is really for St Agnes and Bryher folk. Though you may get a view between Porth Looe and the golf club on St Mary’s. But if you can’t see Mercury you won’t be able to miss Venus if the conditions are right, it sets around 7:30 and is a very bright -3.9. Tonight the two inner planets will be accompanied by a very young moon, which reminds me it was a month ago last night that I photographed the 3 of them from the window of a jet, over Northern France.

Mars is still very much with us, now sadly faded to magnitude –0.2, it shines very high in the southeast at dusk and is due South by 8:30. It's in Cancer, below Pollux and Castor at nightfall and left of them later in the evening.

Saturn that most buoyant of planets, it being the only one that will in water float admittedly in a bath if heroic proportions. The ringed planet is at opposition on the 21st which means it rises as the sun sets and vice versa. And it will be due South at about 12:30, this week it setting at about 6:30 am just as Jupiter rises. The giant planet has passed from behind the sun and is setting around now before the sun at 4pm, which we can’t see. But it’s back in the late dawn sky just before the sun so it may be visible briefly. But by the 31st it’s up almost an hour before the sun so it may best to wait. We won’t see it again before midnight until early July, but by September it will rise around 8 and will be dominating the southern sky throughout the autumn and early winter, but let’s get the summer out of the way first.

If you’re champing at the bit to find Aires, as I’m sure most of you are. The moon is just off new at the moment and on Thursday at nightfall you’ll find it in the west at Sunset just after Venus has retired for the night in Aries, there’s a guide of on the blog. Now who am I to pass judgement on the ancient Greeks, though it’s not as if they can sue or anything, but they must have been on something pretty strong to be able to see a ram in that little pile of nondescript stars.

On the 20th the moon a little further up occults the Pleiades again and on Sunday it’s a little to the North of Taurus the bull, which to be fair is quite like a bulls head, with his bright baleful eye Aldebaran.

And that was your night sky for the week ending on the 4th anniversary The Federal Reserve discontinuing publishing the M3 money supply figures.