Spring trio

Planets continue to congregate in the evening sky. But the only grouping of them is about 15° from the Sun, tantalizingly low down toward the sunset horizon.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations. Arrows through the moving bodies show their movement (against the starry background) from 2 days earlier to 2 days later. Saturn is exaggerated 150 times in size, to show the current attitude of its rings. The Sun is exaggerated 2 times in size.<$>

Astronomical Calendar 2026 shows several other ways of looking at the situation: the top-down view (page 25), the “favorability” graph (page 3), the “elongation” graph (page 139).

Venus, Saturn, and Neptune get into a “trio,” within a circle that reaches a smallest diameter of 1.48°.

Venus will pass less than a degree north of Saturn just less than a day later.

The gathering happens to be near to the vernal equinox point, where the ecliptic ascends through the celestial equator, and where the Sun will on March 20 ascend into the northern hemisphere of the sky.

It also happens that our time calculations are complicated by the perverse custom of changing clocks. On Sunday March 8, clocks in America are to be twisted forward one hour into the “daylight-saving time” that saves no time and misrepresents actual time by the Sun.

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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.

ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.

One way: right-click, and choose ”View image” or ”Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose ”Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.