All About Space - UK (2020-02)

SERPENS

SCUTUM

AQUILA

EQUULEUS

SAGITTARIUS

CAPRICORNUS

Mars

Saturn

Pluto

Mars, the Red Planet, is our Planet of the Month

this month not because it is especially bright or

easy to see, but because it will be taking part in

a wonderful ‘planetary parade’ in the east before

sunrise. Shining at a very respectable magnitude

of 1.1 means Mars will be an easy naked-eye object,

brighter than either of the stars Pollux or Deneb,

so even if it wasn’t part of that parade it would be

worth looking at in its own right.

At the start of March Mars will be on the

western, or right end of a long line of three naked-

eye planets, with Jupiter and Saturn down to its

lower left. By 12 March the trio of worlds will

have bunched up closer together to form an

Orion’s Belt-like trio in the pre-dawn southeastern

sky. Three mornings later, on 18 March, the

situation will have changed quite dramatically:

Mars will be shining very close to Jupiter – just

three Moon widths away to its lower right – and

a waning crescent Moon will be just two degrees

away from the planetary pair. Grouped so close

together, the three objects will make a stunning

sight in the sky, one definitely worth looking at

through a pair of binoculars, and a good chance

to try out photographing it too – best results will

be achieved with a DSLR on a tripod, but your

phone’s camera should pick them up too.

By 20 March the Moon will have left the party,

but Mars and Jupiter will have moved even

closer together. Less than a degree – or two Moon

widths – apart, the pair will be a stunning sight in

binoculars or a telescope’s low-power eyepiece.

By 25 March the parade will look dramatically

different again. Now Mars will be in the centre of

the planetary parade, with Jupiter to its upper right

and Saturn down to its lower left. All three worlds

will be easily visible to the naked eye, and will

look very attractive through binoculars before the

brightening sky begins to wash them out.

As good as Mars will look during March, later

this year Mars will be a lot more impressive. By

the time it has moved into the evening sky it

will be much closer to Earth, so it will look much

brighter and higher too, an obvious orange-red

‘beacon’ in the sky, brighter than anything else

around it. By then four missions should be on their

way to Mars, one built by NASA, another by the

European Space Agency, one from China and one

from the United Arab Emirates. These will try to

answer the question of if there ever was – or still

is – life on the Red Planet.

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn form a planetary parade in the morning sky

this month, while Venus makes a dazzling entrance in the evening

This month ’s planets

STARGAZER

Mars

Constellation: Aquarius

Magnitude: -0.5

AM/PM: PM

SSE

05:00 GMT on 20 March

ESE SE

Planet of the month