The Storyteller's Night Sky

There are three celestial pairings this week that are worth knowing about, and even though we might not see all of it, this is The Storyteller’s Night Sky, so we can live into these events out of our imaginations.

The Sun arrives at its Equinox moment Monday, March 20 at 5:24 pm in the eastern time zone, entering the cardinal sign of Aries.

On Tuesday the Moon will be full, for the last time this season. If we were to talk about it as medievalists, we wouldn’t be content to just give it a name, or speak about its phase, but to say instead that in the mid-week, the first heaven will be fully illuminated.

This week the astrological love omens are on high alert, given that the gracious planet Venus is catching up with expansive Jupiter in the evening sky. We could just say that their meeting on Thursday will make for a great date night, and leave it at that, but I’m interested in the longer narrative.

Forty early mornings. That’s about one and a half Moon cycles, and is regarded as the amount of time it takes to break, or to form, a habit.

For the rest of the month Venus and Jupiter will be spectacular in the evening sky, looking west an hour after sunset, and then they’ll come into closest conjunction with one another just over two weeks from now. What’s their story?

Mars is connected to the capacity for speech, while Taurus is connected to the organ for speech.

Once you can identify the handle and ladle of the Big Dipper, you can make your way to a lot of other night sky wonders, including Comet ZTF, the green comet that has dominated the astronomy headlines for several weeks now.

Recently I was asked: “When is the New Year no longer young?” to which I would reply: The New Year is no longer young when we close the door on what came before.

If the skies are clear this week, we’ll see the waning gibbous Moon making a path through the stars of Leo and Virgo, rising later each night, until it gets to the eve of its last quarter on Friday the 13th; then it rises after midnight.