Scruton Sky at Night – March 2020

The second of this year’s ‘supermoons’ will occur on the evening of 9 March.

On the morning of 19 March at around 6 am there will be a very thin crescent moon with several planets adjacent as shown in the image below. You should at least be able to see Jupiter & Mars.

On 24 March in the evening, Venus will reach its greatest elongation from the Sun, and will be a very bright object. After that, it will slowly fall sun-ward, but will still be bright for a few more months. You should be able to see the moon and Venus high up in the SW sky on 28 March at around 4pm in the afternoon – quite unusual.

Finally, British Summer Time begins at 2:00 am on 29 March. The clocks go forward 1 hour and as the skies become lighter, sightings will be less easy.

by Peter Williams