Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Thursday, March 24th.  The sun will rise at 7:38.  It’ll be up for 12 hours and 20 minutes, setting at 7:59.   The moon, 2 days before last quarter, will rise at 2:29 tomorrow morning

Besides the advancing sunset times and warming temperatures, there’s another sign that spring is here.  That’s the appearance of the constellation Leo the lion high in the southeast in the evening.  The front of this beast is a backward question mark of stars with the bright star Regulus as the dot at the bottom.  That’s his head, mane and chest.  His haunches are a triangle of stars to the left, ending with the bright star Denebola.  A way to find Leo is to remember that cat’s aren’t supposed to like water.  Find the Big Dipper high in the northeast and imagine drilling a hole in the bottom of the bowl.  The water will fall on Leo’s back.  Also you’ll notice the stars of spring to the east are more sparse than those of winter to the west.

* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.  They may be different for your location.

Addendum

This is Tuesday’s image, showing how to locate Leo.

The Big Dipper points to other stars and constellations. Created using my own LookingUp program.