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Week in images: 24-28 February 2025
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By NASA
Skywatching Science Skywatching What’s Up: March 2025… Skywatching Home What’s Up What to See Tonight Moon Guide Eclipses Meteor Showers More Tips & Guides Skywatching FAQ A Fast-Moving Planet and a Crimson Moon!
Catch Mercury if you can, then stay up late for a total lunar eclipse, and learn the truth about the dark side of the Moon.
Skywatching Highlights
All Month – Planets Visibility:
Mercury: Speedy Mercury is visible beneath Venus for the first week and a half of March, for about 30 minutes each evening, as sunset fades. Venus: Venus hangs low in the west after sunset early in the month, but quickly drops lower as the days pass. After mid-March, it’s difficult to observe in the glow of fading sunlight. Mars: Find Mars high in the east following sunset, then setting around 3 a.m. Jupiter: Visible high in the west after dark, and setting about 1 a.m. Daily Highlights:
March 7-9 – Catch Mercury: Look for Mercury beginning about 30 minutes after sunset in the west, about 10 degrees above the horizon.
March 13-14 – Total Lunar Eclipse: The Moon becomes a crimson orb over a couple of hours on March 13th and into the 14th, depending on your time zone.
March 14 – Full moon
March 29 – New moon: This is when the dark side of the Moon faces toward Earth. The new moon appears close to the Sun in the sky, so it’s essentially invisible from the surface (except during solar eclipses).
Transcript
What’s Up for March? A good time to catch Mercury, an eclipse approaches, and the dark side of the Moon.
March Planet Viewing
March begins with Venus still hanging out low in the west after sunset, but it quickly drops out of the sky – by mid-month it’s getting lost in the glare of sunset. Once it gets dark, you’ll find Jupiter and Mars high overhead, keeping you company through the evening. Mars sets a couple of hours after midnight this month, leaving the morning sky “planet free” for the first time in a year.
Sky chart showing Venus and Mercury after sunset in early March. NASA/JPL-Caltech March also has the best opportunity this year for trying to spot fast-moving Mercury if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s only visible for a few weeks at a time every 3 to 4 months. This is because the speedy planet orbits the Sun in just 88 days, so it quickly shifts its position in the sky from day to day. It’s always visible either just after sunset or just before sunrise. On March 7th through 9th, look for Mercury beginning about 30 minutes after sunset in the west, about 10 degrees above the horizon.
You’ll want to ensure your view isn’t blocked by trees, buildings, or other obstructions. Observing from a large, open field, or the shore of a lake or the seaside can be helpful. Spying Mercury isn’t always easy, but catching the fleet-footed planet is a worthy goal for any skywatcher.
Total Lunar Eclipse
This map shows where the Moon will be above the horizon during the March 13-14 total lunar eclipse. There’s a total lunar eclipse on the way this month, visible across the Americas. Lunar eclipses can be viewed from anywhere the Moon is above the horizon at the time. The show unfolds overnight on March 13th and into the 14th, depending on your time zone. Check the schedule for your area for precise timing.
Now, during a total lunar eclipse, we watch as the Moon passes through Earth’s shadow. It first appears to have a bite taken out of one side, but as maximum eclipse nears, the Moon transforms into a deep crimson orb. That red color comes from the ring of all the sunsets and sunrises you’d see encircling our planet if you were an astronaut on the lunar surface right then. Afterward, the eclipse plays out in reverse, with the red color fading, and the dark bite shrinking, until the Moon looks like its usual self again.
And here’s an interesting pattern: eclipses always arrive in pairs. A couple weeks before or after a total lunar eclipse, there’s always a solar eclipse. This time, it’s a partial solar eclipse that will be visible across Eastern Canada, Greenland, and Northern Europe.
The Dark Side of the Moon
The Moon has a dark side, but it may not be what you think. As it orbits around Earth each month, the Moon is also rotating (or spinning). So, while we always see the same face of the Moon, sunlight sweeps across the lunar surface every month as it rotates.
This means there’s no permanently “dark” side. The Moon’s dark side faces Earth when the Moon passes between our planet and the Sun each month. This is the moment when the Moon is said to be “new,” as in a fresh start for its changing phases.
The new moon is also located quite close the Sun in the sky, making it more or less invisible, unless there’s a solar eclipse.
Nights around the new moon phase provide excellent opportunities for observing the sky – especially if you’re using a telescope or doing astrophotography. Without moonlight washing out the sky, you can better see faint stars, nebulas, the Milky Way, and distant galaxies. So next time someone mentions the “dark side of the Moon,” you’ll know there’s more to the story – and you might even discover some deep-sky treasures while the Moon takes its monthly break.
The phases of the Moon for March 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech Above are the phases of the Moon for March. Stay up to date on all of NASA’s missions exploring the solar system and beyond at NASA Science. I’m Preston Dyches from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that’s What’s Up for this month.
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By NASA
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has its next flyby target, the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, in its sights. By blinking between images captured by Lucy on Feb. 20 and 22, this animation shows the perceived motion of Donaldjohanson relative to the background stars as the spacecraft rapidly approaches the asteroid.
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft’s first views of the asteroid Donaldjohanson. The asteroid is circled on the left to guide the eye.NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL Lucy will pass within 596 miles (960 km) of the 2-mile-wide asteroid on April 20. This second asteroid encounter for the Lucy spacecraft will serve as a dress-rehearsal for the spacecraft’s main targets, the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Lucy already successfully observed the tiny main belt asteroid Dinkinesh and its contact-binary moon, Selam, in November 2023. Lucy will continue to image Donaldjohanson over the next two months as part of its optical navigation program, which uses the asteroid’s apparent position against the star background to ensure an accurate flyby.
Donaldjohanson will remain an unresolved point of light during the spacecraft’s long approach and won’t start to show surface detail until the day of the encounter.
From a distance of 45 million miles (70 million km), Donaldjohanson is still dim, though it stands out clearly in this field of relatively faint stars in the constellation of Sextans. Celestial north is to the right of the frame, and the 0.11-degree field of view would correspond to 85,500 miles (140,000 km) at the distance of the asteroid. In the first of the two images, another dim asteroid can be seen photobombing in the lower right quadrant of the image. However, just as the headlights of an approaching car often appear relatively stationary, Donaldjohanson’s apparent motion between these two images is much smaller than that of this interloper, which has moved out of the field of view in the second image.
These observations were made by Lucy’s high-resolution camera, the L’LORRI instrument — short for Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager — provided by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Asteroid Donaldjohanson is named for anthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the fossilized skeleton — called “Lucy” — of a human ancestor. NASA’s Lucy mission is named for the fossil.
Lucy’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For more information about NASA’s Lucy mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/lucy
By Katherine Kretke
Southwest Research Institute
Media Contact:
Nancy N. Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Feb 25, 2025 Related Terms
Lucy General Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Science The Solar System Trojan Asteroids View the full article
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By NASA
Wayne Johnson, who in 2012 earned the highest rank of Fellow at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, is known worldwide as an expert in rotary wing technology. He was among those who provided help in testing Ingenuity, NASA’s Mars helicopter.NASA / Eric James NASA Ames’ Wayne Johnson Elected to 2025 Class of New Members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
Dr. Wayne R. Johnson, aerospace engineer at Ames Research Center, will be inducted as a new member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE), class of 2025, on October 5, 2025, for his 45+ years of contributions to rotorcraft analysis, tiltrotor aircraft development, emerging electric aircraft, and the Mars Helicopter development. NAE members are among the world’s most accomplished engineers from business, academia, and government and are elected by their peers. The full announcement was released to the press on February 11, 2025 from NAE and is at
https://www.nae.edu/19579/31222/20095/327741/331605/NAENewClass2025
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