• Timothy Johnson

Gibbous Moon Visits Leo

The moon moves into the constellations of early spring in the coming week. On Tuesday night the gibbous moon is in the zodiacal constellation Leo and near the bright star Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation.

In winter Leo hovers at the eastern sky as the night unfolds. It takes several hours to rise high in the east. Now, Leo is a dominant constellation high in the eastern sky after sunset and it moves overhead as the night progresses.

Leo, the mythological lion, is an open window to beyond the stars of our Milky Way. While each visible star marks the constellation, beyond those stars the area is loaded with distant galaxies. Some of them are visible with a pair of binoculars. A knowledgeable amateur astronomer, pointing a pair of binoculars in that area of the sky, can’t count how many visible galaxies are out there. There are so many.

The moon will spend several nights in the constellation before exiting later in the week and moving into the summer constellation Virgo, another constellation laden with more galaxies than you can count with a good scope.

 

Sunrise and Sunset
Day Sunrise Sunset
Fri., March 23 6:40 6:56
Sat., March 24 6:38 6:57
Sun., March 25 6:37 6:58
Mon., March 26 6:35 7:00
Tues., March 27 6:33 7:01
Wed., March 28 6:32 7:02
Thurs., March 29 6:30 7:03
Fri., March 30 6:28 7:04
Temperatures and Precipitations
Day Max (Fº) Min (Fº) Inches
March 16 43 31 0.00
March 17 40 26 0.00
March 18 41 19 0.00
March 19 33 22 0.00
March 20 38 26 0.00
March 21 38 30 T
March 22 38 33 0.74

 

Water temperature in Edgartown harbor: 39º F

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