BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The best chance of the year to see three of the brightest planets close together will occur in March. By the end of the month, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars will fit into a space about the width of your fist held at arm's length.
The three planets will appear in a line in the west-southwest as the sky darkens after sunset early in March, and the line will quickly become shorter as the days go by.
Jupiter, in the middle of this trio, will be the brightest. Mars will be both lowest and faintest, a combination that may make it difficult to find Mars at first in bright twilight. Saturn, the highest, will be much brighter than Mars but still no rival for Jupiter.
Around mid-month, Mars will set about two hours after the sun, Jupiter an hour later, and Saturn an hour after that.
If you missed the moon's parade past Mars, Jupiter and Saturn during the second week of February, you'll be able to see a repeat performance. The difference this time will be that the three planets will be closer together and lower in the western sky. The crescent moon will pass Mars in the early evening of March 8, Jupiter on March 9 and Saturn on March 10.
The morning sky will be unable to compete with this evening spectacle during March as Venus gradually sinks toward the sun. Venus will still be brighter than any other planet, but it will be increasingly hard to find a half hour before sunrise unless you have a clear view of the eastern horizon.
By March 15, Mercury will be slightly above Venus. Normally that would make the small planet easy to pick out, but this time Mercury will be so faint for observers in the Northern Hemisphere that binoculars may be needed to locate it in the bright morning twilight. For those watching in the Southern Hemisphere, however, Mercury will be a fine sight well above the eastern horizon in one of its best appearances of the year.
The zodiacal light is sunlight scattered off billions of microscopic dust particles. Some of the particles were left behind by comets, and others were jolted off meteors or asteroids by collisions. These cosmic leftovers orbit the sun in the same plane as the planets, so they follow the zodiac, which gives their light its name.
To see the zodiacal light at mid-northern latitudes, go outside an hour and a half after sunset (15 minutes earlier if you're farther south, two hours after sunset if you're farther north). Look toward the west-southwest for a soft white wedge of light climbing upward and leaning slightly toward the south. Binoculars won't help, because their fields of view are too narrow.
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