Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Ephemeris for Thursday, February 28th.  The sun will rise at 7:21.  It’ll be up for 11 hours and 8 minutes, setting at 6:29.   The moon, 3 days past full, will rise at 10:06 this evening.

Let’s preview the month of March which begins tomorrow.  This month the increase in daylight hours is at its greatest, with Spring 3 weeks away.  Daylight hours will increase from 11 hours and 11 minutes tomorrow to 12 hours and 44 minutes on the 31st.  Along with that the altitude of the sun at noon will increase from 38 degrees today to 49 ½ degrees at month’s end.  Local noon, by the way for Interlochen and Traverse City is about 12:50 p.m, which is mainly due to the fact that our standard time meridian happens to run through Philadelphia.  That’s before daylight time starts next week.  The big astronomical event this month be the appearance of Comet PanSTARRS in the evening.  Spring starts on the 20th.

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

Addendum

Comet PanSTARRS path in the March evening sky. Created using Cartes duCiel.

Cartesn duCiel doesn’t do twilight.  The comet will be in twilight through out March.