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Ephemeris: 03/23/2026 – Looking out beyond the spring stars

March 23, 2026 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Monday, March 23rd. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 19 minutes, setting at 7:59, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:38. The Moon, 2 days before first quarter, will set at 2:23 tomorrow morning.

It is becoming more obvious as the Moon waxes, that there’s more bright stars in the south and southwestern part of the sky than there are in the southeastern sky. That’s because the Milky Way runs through the winter part of the sky. It’s not as bright as the Milky Way appears in the summer since we are looking away from the center of our Galaxy. The disk of our galaxy causes stars to congregate near that Milky band, whether we can see it well or not. That is the main reason the winter stars are so bright. In the southeast we are looking at the spring sky. Leo the lion and of course the Great Bear with the Big Dipper are there, but we are mostly looking outside the disk or galaxy to the universe beyond. So we’re looking through fewer nearby stars, so the spring sky seems somewhat lackluster compared to the crazy chaos of the winter sky.

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

Comparing the skies of spring on the left, specifically 9:00 PM on March 23rd. Looking at the Milky Way and the stars that we could see in our Galaxy and a view of what’s on the outside. The little red ovals are galaxies. There are some blue ovals in there too, which are also galaxies, but more than one. They are interacting galaxies. Also visible, is the major galaxy cluster of spring on the far left, the Virgo cluster, a big mashup of galaxies. Notice that along the milky path there are hardly any galaxies. This is called the zone of avoidance. It isn’t that the galaxies avoid that area, but that the dust and gas in the galactic plane blocks light from the galaxies behind it. Created using Stellarium and GIMP.

Categories: Ephemeris Program, Galaxies, Milky Way, Seasonal skies