Planets, Lunar Eclipse And A Comet In March 2024 Skywatching

Space.com

Find out where to spot Jupiter and Mercury this month. A penumbral lunar eclipse will occur on the evening of March 24-25.  Comet 12p/Pons-Brooks may be visible to the unaided eye later in the month as well.   Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Transcript

00:00 What's up for March? Some close pair-ups with the Moon and Mercury makes an appearance,

00:08 a subtle lunar eclipse, and a chance to catch a comet. In March, you'll find Jupiter shining

00:15 brightly in the west during the early evening hours all month long. And on March 13, it's

00:21 joined by a crescent moon so close that the pair will be visible together through binoculars.

00:26 On the following evening, the Moon visits the Pleiades. This is another close pairing

00:31 with the five-day-old lunar crescent hanging right next to the bright star cluster that

00:35 will look great through a small telescope or binoculars. Near the end of March, observers

00:40 in the northern hemisphere will have the best opportunity of the year to catch a glimpse

00:44 of Mercury in the evening sky. Look for it shining brightly low in the west following

00:50 sunset. Overnight on March 24 and into the 25th, the

00:55 Moon will pass through the outer part of Earth's shadow, creating a faint lunar eclipse called

01:00 a penumbral eclipse. Now, the more spectacular variety of lunar eclipses happens when the

01:05 Moon passes through Earth's inner shadow or umbra. That's when we see a dark bite

01:11 taken out of the Moon, or in the case of a total lunar eclipse, a reddish so-called blood

01:15 moon. Penumbral eclipses cause only a slight dimming of the Moon's brightness, so if

01:21 you're not looking for it, you might not know there was an eclipse happening. But if

01:24 you glance at the Moon early in the night and then later around the peak of the eclipse,

01:29 you might notice the difference in brightness. Even faint lunar eclipses like this one are

01:34 always accompanied by a solar eclipse either a couple of weeks before or after. And on

01:39 April 8, a total solar eclipse will sweep across the U.S. We'll tell you more about

01:45 that in next month's video. There's a comet making its way into the

01:50 inner solar system that's already visible with a telescope and might start to become

01:55 visible to the unaided eye by late March or in April. It's a mountain of rock, dust,

02:01 and ice several miles wide named 12P Ponds Brooks. It has a stretched-out, 71-year-long

02:08 orbit that carries it as far from the Sun as the orbit of Neptune and as close as the

02:13 orbit of Venus. Fortunately, because this orbit is tilted, it doesn't cross our planet's

02:18 path, so there's no chance of a collision. Comet 12P has been observed on several of

02:23 its previous appearances going back hundreds of years, and one thing it's known for is

02:27 its occasional outbursts. Sometimes this comet suddenly brightens by quite a bit due to bursts

02:34 of gas and dust being released from beneath its surface. If this happens in the March-April

02:39 time frame as the comet nears the Sun, it could become bright enough to observe with

02:43 the eye alone. But even without additional brightening from outbursts, the comet is predicted

02:49 to peak at a brightness that should make it easy to see with binoculars and possibly just

02:53 naked-eye visible under dark skies by the end of March. Now, comets are notoriously

02:58 unpredictable, so it's hard to know for sure how bright Ponds Brooks will get as it

03:02 nears the Sun, but it's certainly worth a look. You can find it low in the west-northwest

03:08 part of the sky at the end of evening twilight. Comets, along with asteroids, are leftover

03:14 pieces of the materials that formed the Sun and planets. So catch a comet and glimpse

03:19 one of the building blocks of our solar system with your own eyes.

03:25 Here are the phases of the Moon for March.

03:29 Stay up to date on NASA's missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov.

03:35 I'm Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that's What's Up for this

03:39 month.

03:40 [music]

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