Special to CosmicTribune.com, March 20, 2022

Highlights for the week of March 18-26, 2022

• Spot Arcturus very low in the east-northeast after nightfall and higher in the east later in the evening. By modern measurements Arcturus is visual magnitude –0.05, making it the fourth-brightest nighttime star. It’s bested only by Sirius, Canopus, and Alpha Centauri. …
• Spring begins today. The equinox is at 11:33 a.m. EDT. This is when the center of the Sun’s disk crosses the equator — both Earth’s equator and, equivalently, the celestial equator — heading north for the season. …
• This is the time of year when Orion declines in the southwest after dark, with his Belt roughly horizontal. …
• Last-quarter Moon is on March 24 (exactly last-quarter at 1:37 a.m. Friday morning Eastern Daylight Time). The Moon rises as late as around 3 a.m. local time depending on location. …
• Once dawn begins to brighten, catch Venus in the east-southeast forming a nearly isosceles triangle with Saturn lower left of it and Mars to Venus’s right. The long side of the triangle, the Saturn-Mars side, is 7° long. …

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  The night sky on the first day of Spring 2022