3/27/2023 0 Comments 2017 flying star chartThe March full moon, known as the Worm Moon, Crow Moon, Sap Moon or Lenten Moon, always shines in or near the stars of Leo or Virgo. PST, or 12:40 GMT, it will appear full in the Americas on both Monday night and Tuesday night. Monday, March 6 - Sirius Sparkles like a Diamond (all night)īecause the moon’s full phase will occur on Tuesday, March 7 at 8:40 a.m. Toward midnight, the mare will swing toward the bottom of the moon. In evening, Mare Australe will be on the moon’s right-hand edge. Between them, look for the similar dark craters Brisbane Z and E and the large, lighter grey crater Lyot. The northern and southern boundaries of the mare are dominated by the isolated dark ovals of the craters Oken and Hanno, respectively. Together they comprise Mare Australe, the Southern Sea. For several nights surrounding Saturday, March 4, the moon’s brightly lit southeastern limb will be rotated toward Earth, revealing a collection of dark patches that can be seen in a backyard telescope. Over time, this lunar libration effect lets us see 59% of the moon’s total surface without leaving the Earth. Saturday, March 4 - Lunar Libration Shows Elusive Edge Features (all night)ĭue to the moon’s orbital inclination and ellipticity, it nods up-and-down and sways left-to-right by up to 7 degrees while keeping the same hemisphere pointed towards Earth. In a backyard telescope you can see where the mountains, actually the original crater’s rim, submerge below the basalts, forming the promontories named Laplace (the northern tip) and Heraclides (the southern tip). Sinus Iridum is almost craterless, but hosts a set of northeasterly-oriented wrinkle ridges that are revealed at this phase. A clair-obscur effect named the Golden Handle is produced when the low-angled sunlight along the terminator brightens the eastern side of the prominent Montes Jura mountain range surrounding Sinus Iridum on the north and west. That semi-circular feature, 155 miles (249 km) in diameter, is a large impact crater that has been flooded by the same basalts that filled the much larger Mare Imbrium to its east – forming a round bay on the western edge of the mare. On Friday night, March 3, the terminator on the waxing gibbous moon will fall just west of Sinus Iridum, the Bay of Rainbows. ![]() ![]() (Image credit: Starry Night Education) (opens in new tab)
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