March 9
The Lion's Tail
Sun Position
The Sun is in Pisces, declination near +11.5°; Northern Hemisphere days are now meaningfully longer than nights, and the Southern Hemisphere is symmetrically the reverse.
Sky Highlight
Leo is well-established in the southeastern evening sky by mid-March. The Lion's Sickle, from Regulus through the curve of stars up to Algieba, is high enough for comfortable observing after 9 PM local time from mid-northern latitudes, the spring sky is now clearly asserting itself.
Deep Sky Object
M66 (NGC 3627), a barred spiral galaxy in Leo, about 36 million light-years away, paired visually with M65 in the Leo Triplet; M66 is the largest and brightest of the three and shows visible asymmetry caused by past gravitational interaction with its neighbors. Visible from both hemispheres in March through May.
Featured Star
Denebola (β Leo) is a main-sequence A-type star 35.9 light-years away with a spectral class of A3Va, marking the lion's tail at the opposite end of Leo from Regulus. Infrared observations reveal a debris disk around it, material left over from planet formation, orbiting a star that in a few billion years could host something very like our own solar system.
Around This Date
- March 9, 1564Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa; his telescopic observations of Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings, and the phases of Venus would provide the first direct observational support for a heliocentric solar system.
- March 9, 1961Sputnik 9 (Korabl-Sputnik 4) launched with a dog named Chernushka aboard, along with a mannequin, completing one orbit before successfully returning to Earth as a test of Vostok systems.
The lion's tail, debris-ringed and quietly evolving, is one of the nearest A-type stars, close enough that its youth still shows.