Posted 2 March 2014 This post is biased towards events that can be seen with the unaided eye or via the Internet. It also can only cover predictable events. Random events such as asteroid impacts won’t be listed. Where events are time specific, I have listed the events in AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) and AEDT (Australian Eastern Daylight Time).
Planets: Jupiter will continue to be prominent as the brightest ‘star’ in the early evening sky. Look above the Northern horizon at the end of evening twilight to locate it. Mars is now just over a month from its 2014 opposition (useful information on the 9 March 2014 opposition here and here) and is now visible low above the Eastern horizon after 8:30 pm AEST / 9:30 pm AEDT. Note that as Earth and Mars draw closer, Mars will continue to become noticeably brighter. Saturn rises just after 9:45 pm AEST / 10:45 pm AEDT. As for Mars, look for Saturn low on the Eastern horizon.
Venus is the brightest ‘star’ in the morning twilight sky. To locate Venus, look above the Eastern horizon as the sky brightens. Mercury will be visible in the bright morning twilight sky low above the Eastern horizon (closer to the horizon than Venus). If you haven’t seen Mercury, it will be much easier to see at a more convenient time in the evening twilight sky later this year (September and October 2014). Both Uranus and Neptune are located too close to the glare of the Sun for useful observation.
International Space Station: The International Space Station is visible in the morning then evening sky this week for Canberra, Australia from 3 – 9 March 2014. Information on passes for Canberra (with links to finder charts) can be found here. Go here for satellite viewing information / predictions for all Australian locations.
3 March 2014: The 42nd anniversary (1972) of the launch of the United State’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft. It became the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter (December 1973) and the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. Pioneer 10 was launched on March 3, 1972, by an Atlas-Centaur expendable vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Photography of Jupiter began November 6, 1973, at a range of 25,000,000 km, and a total of about 500 images were transmitted. The closest approach to the planet was on December 4, 1973, at a range of 132,252 km. During the mission, the on-board instruments were used to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the solar system and heliosphere. Radio communications were lost with Pioneer 10 on January 23, 2003, because of the loss of electric power for its radio transmitter, with the probe at a distance of 12 billion kilometers (80 AU) from Earth.
3 March 2014: 45th anniversary (1969) of the the launch of the United State’s Apollo 9 mission launches. During the mission, tests of the lunar module are conducted in Earth orbit. After launching on March 3, 1969, the crewmen spent ten days in low Earth orbit. They performed the first manned flight of a lunar module, the first docking and extraction of a lunar module, two spacewalks, and the second docking of two manned spacecraft – two months after the Soviets performed a spacewalk crew transfer between Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5.
3 March 2014: 2 pm AEST / 3 pm AEDT Saturn stationary
5 March 2014: 35th anniversary (1979) of the closest approach of NASA’s Voyager 1 robotic space craft to Jupiter at a distance of about 349,000 kilometers from the planet’s center. Voyager 1 also visited Saturn in November 1980. On September 12, 2013, NASA announced that Voyager 1 had crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space on 25 August 2012, making it the first human-made object to do so. The probe is expected to continue its mission until 2025, when it will be no longer supplied with enough power from its generators to operate any of its instruments.
5 March 2014: Minor planet Vesta stationary
6 March 2014: 8 pm AEST / 9 pm AEDT Jupiter stationary
8 March 2014: 11:27 pm AEST / 12:27 am AEDT 9 March 2014 First Quarter Moon
9 March 2014: Mercury at descending node
9 March 2014: 80th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Gagarin (1934). He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. He died in March 1968. His successful flight on April 12 1961 is celebrated on this date each year with Yuri’s Night around the world.
