What’s in the Southern Hemisphere night sky tonight, March 2024

Find out what’s in the night sky tonight from your Southern Hemisphere location.

By Glenn Dawes

Published: Thursday, 07 March 2024 at 07:27 AM

If you’re based in the Southern Hemisphere and want to know what you can see in the night sky tonight, this page is for you.

Our monthly-updated night-sky guide will show you what you can see in the Southern Hemisphere over the coming weeks.

We’ll include monthly highlights, stars, constellations, planets and deep-sky objects.

For more advice, read our guides to Southern Hemipshere stargazing and the best night-sky targets to see in Australia.

Southern Hemisphere night sky tonight: highlights, March 2024

Crater Grimaldi. Credit: Steve Marsh

The Moon slowly wobbles on its axis, allowing us to see slightly more than half of its surface. This is known as lunar libration.

However, those revealed areas are often still in shadow.

The two maximum librations in March are both visible.

One occurs during the last quarter Moon on 5 March, where the western limb shows the dark crater Grimaldi more face-on.

The other, on 17 March, has the first quarter Moon displaying great views of Mare Crisium, with Mare Marginis now peeking over the eastern limb.

Stars and constellations

The region of the Milky Way in Puppis and Vela, captured from Coonabaran, Australia. Bright star Canopus in Carina can be seen at the bottom. Photo by: VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

Argo, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts fame, and one of Ptolemy’s original 48 constellations, today exists as Vela, Puppis and Carina.

They retain many links to Argo, including Arabic star names, but Gamma Velorum (in Vela) is also known as ‘Regor’, which is Roger backwards.

Gus Grissom inserted this into NASA’s star charts as a joke on his fellow astronaut Roger Chaffee.

When they were both killed in the Apollo 1 fire, the name remained to honour their memory.

Planets

Conjunction over Brisbane by Teale Britstra, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Equipment: Canon 600D, 18-55mm lens — Conjunction of (from left) Jupiter, the crescent Moon and Venus over the city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Equipment: Canon 600D, 18-55mm lens

You need to start early to see planets this month, for Jupiter and Uranus are setting around 21:00 (mid-month).

A drought then sets in until Mars arrives in the predawn.

This is followed by brilliant Venus, which quickly moves away from the Red Planet, as it drops into the dawn glow heading towards conjunction.

By month’s end this ‘Morning Star’ is a dawn object only.

Saturn returns to the morning, rising out of the Sun’s glow, and passes Venus, being closest on 22nd, only 0.6° apart.

Deep-sky objects

This month, a trip to the Pictor constellation, just west of Canopus, home to impressive double stars such as Eta (η) Pictoris (RA 5h 02.8m, dec. -49° 09’).

Binoculars show a colourful wide pair, with mag. +5.4 white Eta¹(η¹) making a great contrast to mag. +5.0 orange Eta²(η²) 0.5° away.

Here’s a real challenge requiring dark skies and large aperture (20cm+): in the same field with Eta² (0.1° east) is the faint (12th-magnitude) galaxy NGC 1803, showing an oval halo (1.0 x 0.5 arcminutes) with a stellar nucleus.

Just 0.6° west of Eta² lies double star HD 32278, with mag. +7.3 and +9.0 yellow companions 10 arcseconds apart.

A true showpiece is Theta (θ) Pictoris (RA 5h 24.8m, dec. -52° 19’). With matched mag. +6.8 stars a comfortable 38 arcseconds apart, Theta stands out in the field of view like brilliant white headlights.