This is Ephemeris for Wednesday, March 11th. Today the Sun will be up for 11 hours and 41 minutes, setting at 7:43, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:00. The Moon, at last quarter today, will rise at 4:42 tomorrow morning.
Let’s take our weekly look at the whereabouts of the naked-eye planets. At 8:15 PM or about a half hour after sunset, Venus may be seen very low in the West. A very low western horizon will be necessary to spot it, like from the shore of Lake Michigan. Saturn is no longer visible, being too close to the direction of the Sun. Jupiter is the brilliant star-like object more than halfway up in the southern sky. It’s the brightest star-like object in the sky. The planet and its moons are a treat for binoculars or a telescope. Jupiter’s four brightest, so-called Galilean Moons are on the east side of the planet, though binoculars will probably show three. The moon closest to the planet are two moons close together, which are resolved in telescopes.
The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.
Addendum
Venus is seen low in the western sky at 8:15 PM tonight March 11, 2026, or 32 minutes after sunset. Venus, at this time will be only 7½° above the horizon. Created using Stellarium.
Jupiter is seen with the bright winter stars in the south at 9:00 PM. Also showing are the zodiacal constellations of Taurus, Gemini where Jupiter is, and Cancer where it is heading to later this year . Created using stellarium.
The Moon 1 day past last quarter, as seen at 6 tomorrow morning, March 12, 2026. A view visible in small telescopes showing an image with and without selected features labeled. Created using Stellarium, LibreOffice Draw, and GIMP.
Telescopic Jupiter and Venus (north up) as they would be seen in a small telescope with the same magnification. Venus will be visible for a short time near the western horizon, while Jupiter is visible mopst of the night. Venus’ apparent diameter will be 10.3″, and be 96.6% illuminated. It’s on the far side of the Sun. Jupiter will be 41.4″ in diameter, with its moon shown here for 9 PM, tonight March 11th, 2026. The moons can shift noticable over an hour. . The (”) symbol means seconds of arc, or 1/3600th of a degree. Created using Cartes du Ciel (Sky Charts), LibreOffice Draw and GIMP.
The naked-eye planets and the Moon at sunset and sunrise on a single night, starting with sunset on the right on March 11th, 2026. The night ends on the left with sunrise on the 12th. The Venus label is overprinting Saturn and its label. 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 11th and 12th, 2026. Some of the columns are self-explanatory, others are 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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