51今日大瓜

Our officially begins when the sun crosses north of the at the March equinox. For those in the southern hemisphere, that marks the beginning of their season of fall/autumn. This year the March equinox is on March 20 and the sun makes that transition at 2:01 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. With the sun rising close to exact east and setting close to exact west these past couple of weeks in conjunction with the spring forward of our clocks for daylight saving time, means the sun has been right in our faces or rearview mirror for the work commute! For the rest of spring, the sun will continue moving northward, rising earlier and setting later, so it won鈥檛 be blinding us during the commute.

A few nights ago, the sun, Earth, and moon were lined up for the . The two weeks before or after such a perfect line-up, will have an alignment of sun, moon, and Earth to make a . For March 2025, the solar eclipse alignment is after the lunar eclipse, on . The new moon will partially cover the sun for those in northeastern North America, Greenland, Iceland, most of Europe, and northwestern Russia. Unfortunately, Bakersfield is nowhere near those sites. The best site will be northern Quebec with 93.1% of the sun covered by the moon. That still leaves plenty of the sun鈥檚 surface visible to keep things lit up enough that most people won鈥檛 see any difference. You鈥檇 need special solar filters to see the partially covered sun.

This evening (March 15) Mercury and Venus are side-by-side low in the west just after sunset, though Mercury is fading quickly and will be hard to spot to the left of Venus in the evening twilight. Venus will be at inferior conjunction between Earth and the sun on March 22. By the end of the month, it will be our . On March 27, a thin will be near Venus in the east before sunrise but this conjunction is not close. They鈥檒l be about from each other, Venus a bit to the left (north) of east and the moon a bit to the right (south) of east.

Jupiter and Mars are now the evening planets. Jupiter shines brilliantly above the head of Taurus and Mars is on the side of Gemini (the left twin). The attached star chart shows the view at 9 p.m. tonight looking south. The winter constellations of Orion, Taurus, and Canis Major with super-bright at its neck or nose (depending on how you connect the dots) are still prominent but the nice spring constellation, Leo, is coming into view in the east-southeast.

狈础厂础鈥檚 and successfully launched last Tuesday, March 11. SPHEREx is short for 鈥淪pectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer鈥� and PUNCH stands for 鈥淧olarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere鈥濃�攂oth definitely mouthfuls! Both will be two-year missions (or longer) but they will be investigating very different things. 

on more than 450 million galaxies and more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way to probe for signatures of the super-rapid expansion that happened a fraction of a second after the Big Bang (something called , which has nothing to do with the economy) as well as search the Milky Way for hidden reservoirs of water, carbon dioxide, and . Whereas and the observatories target specific objects, SPHEREx has a much wider field of view to gather spectral data in 102 different color bands on millions of objects very quickly. The color bands stretch from the optical (visible to our eyes) to the near-infrared. The most interesting objects will be tagged for Webb to look at more closely.

as it transitions into the , providing us with new information about how solar flares and coronal mass ejections form and evolve. That will enable us to on our satellites and human and robotic explorers in space. With many hundreds of billions of dollars invested in and our crucial reliance on the satellites orbiting Earth for commerce, defense, communication, as well as science, we need to improve our understanding of 鈥渟pace weather鈥�. See the and the at for more about the goals and purposes of the missions and updates of what they鈥檝e found. Like all of 狈础厂础鈥檚 missions, the data are in the public domain.

The next shows coming up at the William M Thomas Planetarium are:  鈥淢ars One-Thousand-One鈥� on March 20, on April 4+5, and 鈥淒ynamic Earth鈥� on April 10. I hope you鈥檒l be able to come to one or more of the shows!

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Director of the William M Thomas Planetarium at 51今日大瓜

Author of the award-winning website