Later this month, the cold winter nights will soon give way to calmer weather as we witness the onset of spring. However, early March is a good opportunity to look at the Great Nebula in the constellation Orion, a unique place in our galaxy where new stars are being formed. It is faintly visible to the naked eye, but can easily be seen using a pair of binoculars or a telescope.

This nebula, an immense nearby star-birth region, is probably the most famous of all giant clouds of gas in the sky. It contains hydrogen gas, which forms hot young stars, and proplyds from which planets could eventually form.

The Orion nebula is ‘only’ about 1,500 light years away, meaning that even travelling at the speed of light it would take 1,500 years to reach it. This is relatively close, in astronomical terms. This month, Orion will be situated high in the south just after sunset. It is easy to find the Orion nebula with the unaided eye – just look below the easily-identifiable belt of three stars close to each other in the constellation Orion.

Orion is the mythological hun­ter, in legend the tallest and most handsome of men, facing Taurus the Bull charging towards him.

Nearby in the sky we also find the two celestial hunter’s dogs (the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor) who follow in pursuit of yet another constellation, the Hare (Lepus).

On the spring equinox, the sun will conquer again the long winter darkness to give us equal portions of day and night. March 20 will also be a special occasion as a solar eclipse will happen on that day. Although the eclipse will not be totally visible from Malta, we will be able to view a crescent sun as the moon glides over its surface, obscuring almost 40 per cent of the solar surface at 10.25am.

Keep in mind that you cannot look directly at the sun, not even during such an eclipse. However, you can follow what is happening by projecting the sun’s image through a pinhole in a large piece of card onto a white screen positioned one to two metres away.

More information will be available on the Astronomical Society’s website a few days beforehand.

Sadly, totality will be visible only over a long swathe through the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, with the longest duration of totality nearing three minutes off the coast of the Faroe Islands.

Throughout March one can see bright planet Venus above the southwestern horizon during evening twilight. Higher up, later at night in the constellation Cancer (the Crab), Jupiter is past last month’s closest approach with the Earth for this year; however it still dominates the night sky with its brightness and yellowish hue. Look for it coming into view in the east soon after sunset.

Even a modest pair of binoculars will show its four largest moons, recorded for the first time by Galileo Galilei over 400 years ago.

Astronomical events taking place in March

www.maltastro.org

Alexei Pace is president of the Astronomical Society of Malta.