This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2025 March 1 – March 8
This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2025 March 1 – March 8
This week we will take the path less travelled to pick out a few of the more obscure constellations in our sky. If you don’t have a clear view to the south or if you are cursed by light pollution in that direction, they will be obscure to the point of invisibility. Around 9 pm, cast your eyes toward Sirius in Canis Major, the Big Dog. Hugging the horizon below Sirius you might detect a Y-shaped group of stars that forms Columba the Dove. This is one of the later constellations, created a century after Christopher Columbus made his first voyage, and it was meant to depict a dove sent by another famous sailor called Noah. It could also be the dove released by yet another famous sailor, Jason of the Argonauts fame, to gauge the speed of the Clashing Rocks of the Symplegades. The dove lost some tail feathers and the Argo lost a bit of its stern.
There is a good case to be made for this interpretation. To the left of Columba, rising past the rear end of Canis Major, is the upper part of Puppis the Stern. It was once part of a much larger constellation called Argo Navis, Jason’s ship, which has been disassembled to form Puppis, Vela the Sails and Carina the Keel. To the left of Puppis is a vertical line of three stars forming Pyxis, the (Mariner’s) Compass, and some say it once formed the mast of Argo Navis. At its highest it does point roughly north-south.
This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise is at 7:01 and sunset will occur at 6:11, giving 11 hours, 10 minutes of daylight. Next Saturday the Sun will rise at 6:49 and set at 6:21, giving 11 hours, 32 minutes of daylight.
The Moon is near Venus this Saturday, between Jupiter and the Pleaides on Wednesday, and it is at first quarter Thursday when telescope users can spot the Lunar X within the shadow in early evening. Mercury is in its best evening apparition for the year, appearing higher in the west each evening while Venus lowers, and by next weekend they will be five degrees apart. As Venus nears setting, Jupiter rides high in the northwest above the V-shaped Hyades cluster, while Mars is higher in the south triangulating with the Gemini twins. Beginning at 7:37 pm on Tuesday, telescope users have an hour and a half to watch the shadows of Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede crossing the planet at the same time. Saturn is lost in evening twilight.
The Saint John Astronomy Club meets in the Rockwood Park Interpretation Centre this Saturday at 7 pm. Tune in to the Sunday Night Astronomy Show at 8 pm on the YouTube channel and Facebook page of Astronomy by the Bay.