March 2026

Compiled by John Panek

Monthly Highlights 

Total Lunar Eclipse the evening of March 2-3, beginning shortly before midnight and reaching totality at 6:33am (EST) just before the moon sets.  Next one visible from Miami will be New Years Eve in 2028.  

Noted Universe Today Podcaster Frasier Cain has interviewed Lee Feinberg, the former Optical Systems Architect of the JWST at https://youtu.be/0R3ykUkxH5M?si=qXOO1PixkdOgOzmw  They discuss the current state of JWST, the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory, and the LIFE Telescope for over an hour!  

A neutrino observatory in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea off Sicily recorded on 13 Feb 2023 the passage of a neutrino with energy 220 PeV, much larger than all previously observed.  Scientists have now modeled a realistic population of blazars that could have produced this event while remaining consistent with constraints on gamma-ray and neutrino observations.  Blazars as a Potential Origin of the KM3-230213A Event

Skywatching

Lunar Phases:

     March 3, Full Moon

     March 11, Last Quarter (waning gibbous)

     March 18, New Moon 

     March 25, First Quarter (waxing gibbous)

Planets:

     Jupiter is well placed in Taurus moving to Gemini mid-month.  At peak altitude near sunset, it sets around 3:30am local.

     Uranus in Taurus all month, rising in late evening and visible all night.  Transits near 2am.

     Neptune and Pluto are behind the Sun in March

     Mercury can potentially be seen March 24, about 10 degrees above the eastern horizon an hour before sunrise

     Saturn and Venus make a great pair in the west after sunset, conjuncting on March 8

Comets:

C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) morning binocular comet in Pegasus, magnitude 11 but will brighten rapidly.  Finder chart:  SkyTools Chart

Potentially a bright one coming our way, C/2026 A1 (MAPS), will reach perihelion April 4 at a distance of 0.005 AU.  It is a Kreutz sungrazer, a fragment of the Great Comet of 1106.  

Meteor Showers

Nothing impressive this month :(

ISS Passes

(update)

Space Agency News

After some delays due to leaking liquid hydrogen seals, the next Artemis II mission launch window begins April 1, 6:24pm EST for a 2-hour duration, opening again April 3-6.  Here is a daily agenda showing what will happen during the 10-day mission once it lifts off:  NASA’s Artemis II Moon -

ESA's Mars Orbiters watched a solar superstorm hit the Red Planet, picking up 200 "normal" days' worth of radiation in just 64 hours.   Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter reveal the atmosphere's ionospheric response via mutual radio occultations measuring vertical electron density profiles.  Martian ionospheric response during the may 2024 solar superstorm | Nature Communications