Table of contents for March 2026 in Astronomy

THE SAFE RETURN of the Shenzhou-20 crew on Nov. 14 brought an end to the longest single stay in orbit for any Chinese crew. The crew landed at the Dongfeng landing site in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, ending their 204-day mission. Yet the successful homecoming immediately ushered in a new, albeit temporary, crisis. While the three taikonauts touched down safely, they left their replacements — the Shenzhou-21 crew — marooned aboard the Tiangong space station with no ride home in the event of an emergency. The Shenzhou-21 crew docked at Tiangong Oct. 31, beginning their own six-month mission and a brief week-long overlap with the Shenzhou-20 crew. Just as the Shenzhou-20 crew was preparing to leave, they discovered a small crack in their return capsule’s window glass. The Chinese…

MARCH 2026 Early-morning lunar eclipse A total lunar eclipse is the highlight of the month. For planetary action, Jupiter is well placed most of the night and there are many events involving its Galilean moons. Soon after sunset, brilliant Venus appears low in the western sky. Within reach of binoculars, Uranus wanders close to stars that are easy to find south of the Seven Sisters. It’s a great time to spot this distant globe. A total lunar eclipse is visible across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and parts of South America the morning of March 3. It is also observable after sunset in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Indonesia. Watch the Moon rise on March 2 among the stars of Leo. Stay up past midnight into the early hours of March…

HOW TO USE THIS MAP This map portrays the sky as seen near 35° north latitude. Located inside the border are the cardinal directions and their intermediate points. To find stars, hold the map overhead and orient it so one of the labels matches the direction you’re facing. The stars above the map’s horizon now match what’s in the sky. The all-sky map shows how the sky looks at: 10 P.M. March 1 10 P.M. March 15 9 P.M. March 31 Planets are shown at midmonth MARCH 2026 Note: Moon phases in the calendar vary in size due to the distance from Earth and are shown at 0h Universal Time. CALENDAR OF EVENTS 2 The Moon passes 0.4° north of Regulus, 8 A.M. EST Asteroid Pallas is in conjunction with…

TO MANY OF YOU, Observable Space — formerly PlaneWave — needs no introduction. Starting as a breakaway from Celestron in southern California in 2006, PlaneWave was founded by Rick Hedrick and Joe Haberman. It has grown to become an international provider of telescopes from 12.5 inches to 1 meter in size. The most popular design is the Corrected Dall-Kirkham, which gives a flat field with no coma and no astigmatism across a large circle of illumination at a relatively fast f/ratio, typically f/6.8. I’ve had several PlaneWave/Observable Space scopes over the years, and I’ve watched as these telescopes evolved to what they are today. My latest is the CDK 14, a 14-inch Corrected Dall-Kirkham utilizing a large two-element corrector lens located in the primary baffle tube. The CDK 14 is one…

Q | WHY ARE CRATERS PERFECTLY ROUND EVEN THOUGH METEORITES ARE IRREGULARLY SHAPED? Frank Casella Ramsey, New Jersey A | To answer your question, let’s have some fun. First, watch as I throw this irregularly shaped rock down at an angle onto a smooth mudflat. The rock strikes the flat and, in the process, splatters mud in all directions. Now let’s venture over to the affected spot and examine the result: an elongated hole around the rock’s impact point. The elongation is as much a result of the impact angle as of the rock’s nonspherical shape. But notice the rock: Apart from being dirty and a bit the worse for wear, it has undergone no alteration from the impact. Now, let’s go to the Moon 108 million years ago. When a…

A WHIRLPOOL OF STAR FORMATION The Virgo Cluster holds literally thousands of galaxies, many of which are big, bright, and beautiful. NGC 4535 checks two of these boxes. With a diameter roughly equal to the Milky Way’s, it ranks among the larger galaxies in the local universe. And this Hubble image leaves no doubt as to its visual splendor. But the galaxy lies nearly face-on to Earth and has a low surface brightness, making it a challenge to see through small telescopes. This led American amateur astronomer Leland Copeland to dub it the “Lost Galaxy” in the 1950s. Fortunately, Hubble’s 2.4-meter mirror has no trouble revealing NGC 4535’s delicate spiral arms, chock-full of bright blue star clusters and the pink emission nebulae that give birth to them.…

Following the Nov. 12 end of the 43-day U.S. government shutdown, NASA hosted a livestream Nov. 19 to share spacecraft observations of Comet 3I/ATLAS, the third detected interstellar object to traverse our solar system. The unprecedented campaign captured the visitor with a combination of more than a dozen heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics instruments. Observations began in early autumn, as the comet plunged toward the inner solar system to make its closest approach to the Sun Oct. 29. EYES IN THE SKY The earliest shots came from NASA’s Psyche, currently nearly 262 million miles (422 million kilometers) from Earth on its journey to the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, which captured images of 3I/ATLAS on Sept. 8 and 9 from a distance of 33 million miles (53 million km). The photos…

For decades, amateur astronomers have railed against light pollution’s impact on the night sky. More recently, studies have revealed how artificial light at night (ALAN) is detrimental to sleep patterns, causing fatigue and stress in humans and animals. Now, research published Nov. 12 in Nature Climate Change has uncovered yet another concern: ALAN is increasing carbon released by plants and animals across continents. This reduces the amount of carbon stored in ecosystems, potentially exacerbating climate change impacts from other sources. Using data from satellite observations and 86 carbon flux monitoring sites across North America and Europe, the authors found that ALAN increases ecosystem respiration — a natural process that happens when plants, microbes, and animals release carbon dioxide through activity and growth. They found no increase in plant photosynthesis, however,…

A STUDY PUBLISHED OCT. 10 in Science Advances proposes a solution to a giant-planet mystery that scientists have pondered for decades: Why do the ferocious jet streams at the equators of Jupiter and Saturn roar eastward — in the same direction as those planets rotate — while the same winds on Uranus and Neptune run westward, against their planets’ spin? The prevailing assumption was that the opposite flows must be due to different mechanisms. However, the authors note, the planets are so similar — all four receive little sunlight, possess moderate internal heat sources, and rotate rapidly — that a single underlying process seems more likely. Using hydrodynamic models to simulate the planets’ atmospheres, the team discovered that powerful convection cells (rising and sinking currents of gas) organize into tilted columns…

ALTHOUGH WE MAY BE loath to admit it, there sometimes appears to be a little magic in science. By magic, I refer to an overwhelming sense of wonder that accompanies surprising outcomes. Events over time — perhaps billions of years — can be folded together to produce a fascinating story. This is one of those stories. It begins in the early solar system, when violent impacts shaped a small world — and ends with those same forces leaving their mark on Earth, in ways that would astonish both modern-day scientists and the Indigenous peoples who witnessed stones falling from the sky. The planetary protagonist The story starts nearly 4.6 billion years ago in a molecular cloud, when a cold, dense core collapsed into a spinning disk. As hydrogen and helium were…

This map unfolds the entire night sky from sunset (at right) until sunrise (at left). Arrows and colored dots show motions and locations of solar system objects during the month. To locate the Moon in the sky, draw a line from the phase shown for the day straight up to the curved blue line. THE PLANETS IN THEIR ORBITS Arrows show the inner planets’ monthly motions and dots depict the outer planets’ positions at midmonth from high above their orbits. THE PLANETS IN THE SKY These illustrations show the size, phase, and orientation of each planet and the two brightest dwarf planets at 0h UT for the dates in the data table at bottom. South is at the top to match the view through a telescope. JUPITER’S MOONS Dots display positions…

FRENCH ASTRONOMER Charles Messier did not intend to be remembered for his discoveries of galaxies, nebulae, and stars clusters when he looked to the sky in the 1750s. Dubbed the “Ferret of Comets” by French King Louis XV after Messier’s acceptance into the French Academy of Sciences in 1770, he discovered 13 comets and observed many more, expecting to be remembered for his comet work. One night while searching the sky to recover Halley’s Comet on its predicted return in 1758, he came across a fuzzy patch of light in Taurus. He determined through subsequent observations that it was stationary, and thus not a comet. He recorded its position so as not to mistake it for a comet in the future. Messier 1 (M1) — later known as the Crab…

As close as we astronomers love to feel to space, one thing stands between us and the outer reaches: Earth’s atmosphere. More than 60 miles (97 kilometers) of gases separate us from the cosmos, and it has an effect on our ability to photograph and observe. Astronomers speak of two measures of atmospheric quality: transparency and seeing. Astronomical League observing programs often require you to record estimates of those conditions. So what are they? Transparency Transparency is exactly what it sounds like: how clear the atmosphere is. Clouds, smoke, dust, and haze can obscure your view of celestial objects. You may decide not to attempt to observe or image on a given night if the transparency is poor enough. Discerning transparency takes practice. The more you look up at your…

Four shells of dust are visible around the binary Wolf-Rayet star system Apep, imaged here by JWST. Earlier observations with other telescopes showed only one shell. The final image is a composite with blue, green, and red hues assigned to separate infrared wavelength ranges to help distinguish the system’s unique architecture. JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument captured Apep, named for the Egyptian serpent deity of chaos, in incredible detail, revealing previously unseen layers of glowing red-orange carbon dust. The shells are produced as material is ejected during 25-year periods when the stars pass close to one another as part of their 190-year orbit. What’s more, combined JWST and Very Large Telescope data confirm the system, located 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Norma, actually contains three stars. The third, a massive supergiant,…

ASTRONOMERS TYPICALLY describe the cosmos with numbers that are, well, astronomical. They measure distances within our galaxy in light-years, where 1 light-year equals 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers), while other galaxies lie millions or even billions of light-years away. And stars typically live billions of years within a universe some 13.7 billion years old. But these enormous numbers obscure the remarkable pace at which some events transpire. For example, it takes no more than a few million years for micron-sized dust grains to grow into planets thousands of miles across. Scientists don’t fully understand how this happens so quickly, though evidence abounds that it has occurred not only in our solar system but also around most of our galaxy’s stars. An edge-on view A big part of the problem stems…

Red Sun DayStar Filters Warrensburg, Missouri DayStar’s Sol 100 Hydrogen-alpha telescope is a 4-inch instrument that allows safe viewing of normally invisible solar features. The design offers a ¾° field of view and unique coatings, optimizing the Sol 100 for the Hα wavelength. $4,995 1-866-680-6563 www.daystar.com Both eyes open Celestron Torrance, California Celestron’s Skymaster Pro ED 15x70mm Porro Binoculars feature front lenses made of extra-low-dispersion glass. These binoculars have a 4.4° field of view and 15.7mm of eye relief. The unit weighs 4.6 pounds (2.1 kilograms). $349.95 1-310-803-5955 www.celestron.com Spacey view Firefly Books Richmond Hill, Ontario If you’ve been following the JWST, you’ll delight in Webb’s Cosmos: Images and Discoveries From the James Webb Space Telescope, by professional astronomer Marcin Sawicki. This 304-page hardcover book contains more than 200 of…

SEND YOUR IMAGES TO: readergallery@astronomy.com. Please include the date and location of the image, your mailing address, and complete photo data: telescope, camera, filters, and exposures.…

HOW TO USE THIS MAP This map portrays the sky as seen near 30° south latitude. Located inside the border are the cardinal directions and their intermediate points. To find stars, hold the map overhead and orient it so one of the labels matches the direction you’re facing. The stars above the map’s horizon now match what’s in the sky. The all-sky map shows how the sky looks at: 9 P.M. May 1 8 P.M. May 15 7 P.M. May 31 Planets are shown at midmonth MAY 2026 Note: Moon phases in the calendar vary in size due to the distance from Earth and are shown at 0h Universal Time. CALENDAR OF EVENTS 1 Full Moon occurs at 17h23m UT 3 Venus passes 7° north of Aldebaran, 7h UT 4…