This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, March 12th. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 45 minutes, setting at 7:45, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:58. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 7:49 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. At 8:30 PM this evening four of the five naked eye planets will be out. Starting from the West we have Venus the brightest of all. Left and a bit below is the much dimmer Mercury. Both will rapidly disappear in evening twilight in a less than a week. Venus will pass in conjunction with the Sun on March 22nd, Mercury will do the same two days later. Jupiter, the second-brightest planet will be high in the southwest. Mars, the third-brightest planet now, with its distinctive reddish hue, is high in the south-southeast, below and right of the stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini. By the end of the month only two planets, Mars and Jupiter will be left in the evening sky.
The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Venus and Mercury seen very low in the west at 8:30 PM this evening, March 12th 2025. Created using Stellarium.
Jupiter, and Mars seen high in the South and southwest at 9:00 PM tonight, March 12th 2025. Created using Stellarium.
The Moon tonight, March 12th 2025, in it’s 9 PM orientation, as it might appear in a small telescope. Selected features are labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Telescopic Venus and Jupiter (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. These planets are shown for tonight, 9 PM, March 12, 2025. Apparent diameters: Venus 56.8″, 4.6% illuminated, it’s now 27.3 million miles or 44.0 million kilometers from the Earth; Jupiter 38.1″. Mercury, 8.5″, and Mars 9.7″ in diameter, neither is shown. Planetary surface detail is more subtle than shown here. The ” means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts).
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on March 12, 2025. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 13th. Saturn is close to the direction of the Sun, but south of it, and is not up at either sunrise or sunset. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it. Created using my LookingUp app and GIMP.
This is a low precision ephemeris of the Sun Moon and naked eye planet positions for today and tomorrow, March 12th and 13th, 2025. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others not. The transit column is the time that the body crosses the meridian and is due south. Elong, for elongation, is the angle between the Sun and that body. RA is right ascension, which is the object’s east-west position on the celestial sphere in hours and minutes. Dec is declination which is the north-south position of the object on the celestial sphere in degrees and minutes. R is the distance of that object from the Sun in astronomical units. An astronomical unit is about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. And Delta is the distance of that object from the Earth, also in astronomical units. I omit the ‘m’ in am and pm for compactness. The data was generated using my LookingUp for DOS app and displayed as a table by my Ephemeris Helper app.
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