Today:
Is March going out like a lion? Leo the Lion continues to climb higher in the March evening skies. Its brightest star – Regulus – is more than half way above the southeast horizon at 8:30 PM EDT. Looking above and left of Regulus, the stars form a curve like the letter “c”, giving it the appearance of a sickle, or a “backward” question mark.
Sunday:
Orion is now slipping slowly into the southwest, found about one third of the way up from the horizon around 8:30 PM EST this evening. The bright star below his three belt stars, Rigel, remains distinct. A stellar powerhouse, Rigel generates 120,000 times more light than our Sun, but at a distance of nearly 900 light years.
Monday:
With all the other visible planets in the neighborhood of the Sun, Jupiter remains our only planetary cousin offering a fairly decent view. However, its emergence from the twilight between 7:30 and 8 o’clock, one quarter of the way up in the west, is part of its curtain call. Each evening it slips lower, and becomes lost in the Sun’s glare by month’s end.