Sky Tour Podcast for February 2025
This month’s episode is sponsored by Celestron, manufacturer of high-quality telescopes and an industry leader in developing exciting optical products with revolutionary technologies.
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I’m Kelly Beatty of Sky & Telescope magazine, and tonight we’re going on a tour of the stars and planets that you’ll see overhead during March. This month we’ll mark two seasonal transitions, watch eclipses of the Moon and Sun, track down the elusive planet Mercury, and trace out the Winter Hexagon. So grab your curiosity, and come along on this month’s Sky Tour.
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This will be a month of transition in more ways than one. First, on March 9th, we jump to daylight time in virtually all of the U.S. and Canada. In fact, this month clocks will “spring forward” in much of the Northern Hemisphere. But the date for all that time-shifting varies. It comes three weeks later, on the 30th, across Europe. Mexico abolished daylight time in 2022 — except for places like Tijuana that are near the U.S. border. And because autumn is approaching for our friends Down Under in Australia, they’ll switch back to standard time on April 6th. If this sounds confusing, well, it is!
Perhaps you’ve heard that Benjamin Franklin was the first to propose a seasonal switch to daylight time, but that honor actually belongs to Englishman William Willett. He was an avid golfer who wanted to spend more time after work working on his putting. So in 1907 Willett published a pamphlet titled “The Waste of Daylight,” in which he proposed advancing the clock during summer months.
For us skywatchers, daylight time can be a bit of a nuisance, because it means the sky doesn’t get dark until well into the evening hours, especially in midsummer. For more on this whole subject, search for my “Bah, Humbug” blog at SkyandTelescope.org.
March is also when Earth reaches one of the two equinox points in its year-long orbit. This month it falls on the 20th at 5:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. You’ve likely heard that this equinox also signals the beginning of northern spring, astronomically speaking, and the start of autumn south of the equator. But there’s more to it than just that. Equinox comes from the Latin word aequinoctium, meaning “equal nights.” On this date, days and nights everywhere are both 12 hours long. And, if you’re directionally challenged, on the equinox the Sun rises due east and sets due west no matter where you are. 
The switch to daylight time has one slight advantage for skywatchers: During March, for most of us, the sky is once again dark when we get up each day. So try not to stumble when you step outside before dawn this month.
And you’re going to need to make sure your clocks are set correctly. Otherwise you might miss seeing not one but two eclipses this month.

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The year’s first eclipse is a winner! Not only is it the first total lunar eclipse visible anywhere on Earth since 2022, it’ll be timed perfectly for North (and South) America! Weather permitting, everyone in the contiguous U.S., Mexico, and Canada will be able to watch the event.
Now, here’s the tricky part: Totality, that is, when the Moon is completely within Earth’s dark umbra, takes place in the eastern U.S. after midnight on Friday, March 14th — from 2:26 to 3:32 a.m. Eastern Time. But over on the West Cost totality starts before midnight, late on Thursday, the 13th, at 11:26 p.m. Now, the entire eclipse lasts much longer than this 66-minute window: For example, if you’re on the East Coast, the first umbral nibble comes at 1:09 a.m. and the last nibble at 4:48 a.m. Adjust these times to match your time zone. Or just check skyandtelescope.org ahead of time.
During this event, the Moon will not cross through the center of Earth’s shadow but rather through the northern half. So keep an eye on the northern lunar limb, which will be closest to the outer edge of the umbra. It should look a little brighter than the rest of the disk during totality, and this bright edge should  roll around in a counter-clockwise direction. So will this be an especially dark eclipse? Probably not — and even at mid-eclipse you can expect some brightening along the Moon’s northern limb.
Now, lunar eclipses occur at full Moon. Two weeks later, when the Moon is new on March 29th, it passes almost directly in front of the Sun and create a deep partial solar eclipse. Where you live is key to whether you’ll see it or not. At its maximum, 93% of the Sun’s disk will be covered — as seen at dawn from a bleakly remote spot in northern Québec near the northeastern corner of Hudson Bay. So this event definitely favors the Northeast states, as well as Canada’s Maritime provinces, Greenland, and western Europe. For everyone else farther west in North America, the eclipse comes and goes before sunrise. Sorry!
Some of the most dramatic views will come during sunrise. Seen from New York City, 28% of the Sun’s disk will be missing when it rises. From Boston, where I live, that fraction jumps to 56%. And from Halifax, Nova Scotia? A whopping 83%. Personally, I’m hoping the weather cooperates for this one!
Interestingly, there won’t be any total or annular solar eclipses this year. But there will be a second total lunar eclipse, on September 7th. Sadly, the Americas will miss this one completely — though it’ll be a great show for all of Asia and Australia.
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Honestly, for the past several months we’ve been totally spoiled by having a bunch of planets in view as evening sets in. The players have changed around a bit, but there’s still plenty to see. Venus, in particular, has dazzled in the western sky after each sunset. But its days are numbered — watch it literally plunge toward the western horizon over the first weeks of March. And rising up below Venus, as if to take its place, is Mercury. This month the innermost planet makes its best evening showing of the year. Your best nights to look will be just before and after March 7th. 
Meanwhile, Jupiter and Mars continue their march westward among the evening stars. At nightfall, you’ll find Jupiter nearly overhead, nestled in the horns of Taurus, the Bull, just a few degrees above the bright star Aldebaran. Off to Jupiter’s right, a little more than one clenched fist held at arm’s length, is the always pretty Pleiades star cluster. Roughly three fists to the east of Jupiter is Mars. Right now the Red Planet makes a nice triangle with the stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and it gets a dramatically close visit from a slightly gibbous Moon on the evening of March 8th.
So the planet parade isn’t over quite yet, and it’ll be a few months before Jupiter and Mars disappear from view in the west.
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Once Venus sinks from view in the west after sunset, it’ll race around its orbit and reappear low in the east before dawn by month’s end. By this time next year, it will return to the evening sky. Because it’s so bright, you’ll sometimes come across references to Venus as “the morning star” and “the evening star,” even though of course it’s not a star at all.
Moreover, this back-and-forth movement of Venus in the sky repeats almost exactly every 8 years. If you were to look west an hour after sunset and then mark your calendar for that same date in March 2033, you’ll find Venus in almost exactly the same spot. Why so? Well, Venus circles the Sun in just under 225 days, about 7½ months. And it just so happens that the time it needs to orbit the Sun 13 times is a very close match to the time Earth takes to go around the Sun 8 times. This 13:8 ratio is so perfect that the difference is only about 3½ minutes from one cycle to the next. 
Many cultures have realized that Venus makes a repeat appearance every 8 years, but none of them studied it more closely than the ancient Maya of southern Mexico and Central America. They created tables that marked Venus’ position throughout the year, inscribed these observations on their monuments, and even built some temples with alignments that mark where Venus appears farthest north and south along the horizon throughout the year. According to archeoastronomy Anthony Aveni, Maya priests saw significance in this astronomical coincidence. For them, he explains, everything had to be understood in terms of whole multiples, and that’s where Venus and its 8-year rhythm with the Sun comes in.
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Of course, the evening sky offers much more to see than Venus. The Moon will be working its way eastward across the evening sky until its eclipse around midmonth, and then it’ll be gone from the early evening sky. So, once it gets dark, and especially in the last half of March, make a quarter turn to your left from where the Sun set — and . . just . . look . . up. Wow, all the brilliant stars of winter are arrayed before us in all their glory. Probably easiest to spot is Orion, the Hunter. Look for a distinctive row of three stars in a roughly horizontal line that mark the Hunter’s Belt. 
For me, the Belt is something of a signpost on the celestial highway. All three stars have names. On the left is Alnitak, which means “the girdle” in Arabic; Alnilam, in the middle, translates as “string of pearls”; and on the right is Mintaka, which means “the belt.” They’re all very close to the celestial equator — that is, if you took Earth’s equator and expanded it out into space, it would pass right through Mintaka.
To the belt’s lower right is the star Rigel, which marks his foot. To the belt’s upper left, at Orion’s shoulder, is the bright star Betelgeuse (or Beetle-juice if you prefer). It’s often stated that this is an Arabic phrase meaning “the armpit of Orion.” But a more careful translation of the original Arabic probably refers to his hand. Anyway, do you remember that a few years ago Betelgeuse was mysteriously much dimmer than normal? It’s returned to full brightness now. Apparently the dimming was likely caused by an immense amount of hot material that the star ejected into space, which cooled and form a dust cloud that blocked some of the light coming from the star’s surface.
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Let’s use Orion to make some other easy identifications. Of course, you’ll easily spot Jupiter and Aldebaran to his upper right. Higher still, above Jupiter and almost overhead, is the bright star Capella. To Orion’s upper right are Mars, Pollux, and Castor.
Now look to Orion’s immediate left, and you’ll see Procyon, the alpha star of Canis Minor, the Little Dog. There’s not much to Canis Minor, actually. It’s one of the smaller constellations to begin with, and Procyon and the dimmer star to its immediate upper right are pretty much the whole show. To me, the constellation looks more like a hot dog than a four-footed hunting companion. Interestingly, ancient tales from Mesopotamia, and later the Greeks and Romans, envisioned Canis Minor as a fox.
To Procyon’s lower right by not quite three fists is brilliant Sirius, the Dog Star. Sirius and Procyon are practically next-door neighbors, cosmically speaking; respectively, they’re only 9 and 11 light-years away. Sirius is the brightest star in the entire sky (aside from our own Sun, of course). How soon after sunset can you pick it up? Keep an eye on the horizon directly below Sirius. It’s located due south at 8 p.m. on March 1st, and — thanks to the shift to summer time — it’ll also be due south at 8 p.m. on March 15th.
Now go back to Betelgeuse for a moment. Imagine that it’s at the center of a huge six-sided hexagon in the sky. At the very top is Capella. Going around clockwise, we see Jupiter and Aldebaran, then Rigel, then Sirius at the bottom. To its upper left are Procyon, Mars and the twins of Gemini, and finally back to Capella. Congratulations — you’ve just traced out what skywatchers know as the Winter Hexagon, along with a couple of bonus planets. All of these stars are bright enough to show up even if you have a lot of light pollution where you live.
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Sirius is the real “star” of the winter season. But you can see it throughout much of the year if you know when to look. Sometime in August, it first becomes visible low in the east shortly before dawn. Five thousand years ago, because of the wobble in Earth’s spin axis, this first predawn appearance occurred in late June, and ancient Egyptians knew that the first glimpse of Sirius came just before the annual flooding of the Nile River. They worshipped the star as the spirit of the river. Apparently they were also the first to depict the star as a dog, perhaps associating it with the dog-headed god Anubis.
In more recent times, skywatchers realized that the Dog Star rises and sets with the Sun during late July, an arrangement in the sky known as a conjunction. Some cultures believed that whenever this pairing occurred, the heat from Sirius combined with the heat of the Sun, creating the hot and sultry weather that often comes in late summer. So they named this period of time — from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days afterward — the “dog days.” And today we still refer to this sticky weather as the Dog Days of Summer.
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Thanks for letting me show you around the stars and planets for another month. If you want more tips for viewing the night sky, including a free, interactive star chart for any time or date, check out our website, SkyandTelescope.org.
If you haven’t already subscribed, you can find this Sky Tour on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or review! It will help spread the word about Sky Tour, and I really welcome your feedback.
And if you want to explore the solar system and universe more deeply, check out the full line of binoculars and telescopes available at Celestron.com.
Sky Tour is a production of Sky & Telescope, a division of the American Astronomical Society, and is produced by me, Kelly Beatty.
Next month I’ll talk about some carnivores that are stalking upward in the eastern sky. Until then, I wish you Clear Skies.