The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of March 21, 2026

Saturday: Signs of spring: flower buds, leaves on the trees, beetle larvae, and the Spring Triangle. The bright stars Regulus, Arcturus, and Spica rise as evening starts. By 10:00 p.m., Regulus is five fists held upright and at arm’s length above the south-southeast horizon, Arcturus is two fists above the eastern horizon, and Spica is half a fist above the east-southeast horizon. For more on the Spring Triangle, go to https://www.livescience.com/space/vernal-equinox-how-to-see-spring-begin-just-by-looking-at-the-stars.

Sunday: The open star cluster called The Pleiades is less than a half a fist to the upper left of the moon at 9:00 p.m. They are about three fists above the western horizon at this time.

Monday: Venus is a little less than a fist above due west at 8:00 p.m.

Tuesday: The brightest star in the head of Draco the dragon is called Eltanin, based on the Arabic At-Tinnin or “great serpent”. It is currently about 150 light years away. Eltanin is moving towards our Solar System. In 1.5 million years, it will be only 28 light years away and the brightest star in the night sky, nearly as bright as Sirius is currently. Eltanin is three fists above due northeast at midnight.

Wednesday: Jupiter is about a half a fist to the left of the moon throughout the night. They are six fists above the southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Thursday: The Milky Way is pretty easy to spot in the early spring sky. Just look up. Everything you see in the sky, including that bird that just startled you, is in the Milky Way. But even the path of densely packed stars in the plane of our galaxy that looks like a river of milk is easy to find. Face due west at 9:00 p.m. in a fairly open area and look to your left. The fuzzy Milky Way path starts due south, moves upward past the bright star Sirius, under the bright planet Jupiter, towards the bright star Capella, through W-shaped Cassiopeia and down to due north on your right where the bright star Deneb sits just above the horizon.

Friday: The open star cluster called The Beehive Cluster is right below the moon throughout the night. They are six fists above due south at 9:30 p.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of March 14, 2026

Saturday: Venus is a half a fist held upright and at arm’s length above due west at 8:00 p.m.

Sunday: If you want to put somebody off, tell her or him to wait until Deneb sets. At Ellensburg’s latitude of 47 degrees, Deneb is a circumpolar star meaning it never goes below the horizon. At 10:15 p.m., it will be as close as it gets to the horizon, about two degrees above due north. Watch it reach this due north position about 4 minutes earlier each night.

Monday: Many artists have sung the song “Blue Moon”. But few have sung the song “Blue Planet”. It goes, in part “Blue Planet, you saw me standing with 28 others. Rolling around like a barrel. Without close sisters or brothers.” It’s about the planet Uranus, which orbits the Sun in a rolling motion and has 28 moons. 25 of Uranus’ moons are named after characters in works by William Shakespeare and three are from the poem “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope. Uranus is two and a half fists above due west at 10:00 p.m. It is half a fist below the Pleiades open star cluster.

Tuesday: Ask someone which day in March has the same duration day and night. Go ahead, ask someone. Why are you still reading this? I can wait. If that person said the first day of spring, they are wrong. Today, a few days before the first day of spring, is the date in which day and night are closest in duration in central Washington. Go to https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/ to find the day for your city. It will be close to today for all USA cities.

There are two main reasons for this. First, the atmosphere acts like a lens, bending light from the Sun above the horizon when the Sun is already below the horizon. This makes the Sun appear to rise before it actually rises and appear to set after it actually sets. Second, spring starts when the center of the Sun passes through the point called the vernal equinox. But the Sun is not a point. The upper edge of the Sun rises about a minute before the center of the Sun, and the lower edge sets a minute after the center of the Sun. Thus, even if we didn’t have an atmosphere that bends the sunlight, daytime on the first day of spring would still be longer than 12 hours.

Wednesday: Jupiter is six and a half fists above the south-southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Thursday: If you know exactly where to look in the sky, you can see a few bright planets when the Sun is out. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is always watching the sky when the Sun is out… because it is always watching the Sun! Most of the SOHO images are filtered images of the Sun’s photosphere, the top of the visible layer. But two images, LASCO C2 and C3, place a mask over the Sun to observe the Sun’s corona as well as solar system objects that pass near the Sun, including comets. For more about using SOHO to observe comets, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8yUa8_EAUc.

Friday: Look up in the sky. It’s a plane. It’s a bird. No, it’s the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox!? Spring starts at 7:45 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. The first day of spring is often called the vernal equinox. This label for the day is misleading. The vernal equinox is actually the point in the sky where the Sun’s apparent path with respect to the background stars (called the ecliptic) crosses the line that divides the stars into northern and southern celestial hemispheres (called the celestial equator). This point is in the constellation Pisces the fishes. At the vernal equinox, the Sun is moving from the southern region of background stars to the northern region.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.

The Ellensburg, WA sky for the week of March 7, 2026

Saturday: Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour tonight for the annual ritual called daylight savings. Daylight savings originated in the United States during World War I to save energy for the war effort. But a recent study by two economists shows that switching to daylight savings time may actually lead to higher utility bills. When the economists compared the previous few years of energy bills in the section of Indiana that just started observing daylight savings, they discovered that switching to daylight savings cost Indiana utility customers $8.6 million in electricity. In an even more important consequence of daylight savings, Stanley Coren of the University of British Columbia discovered a 7% jump in traffic accidents on the Monday after we "spring ahead". Blame it on the lost hour of sleep. And, sky watchers will lose even more sleep because the sky stays light for an additional hour.

There are three planets clustered in the sky a half a fist above the western horizon at 6:30 p.m. Venus is by far the brightest of the three. Saturn is to the left of Venus, about one degree away. Most people won’t be able to squeeze their pinky between them. Neptune is the same distance below Venus, but you’ll need large binoculars or a small telescope to see it.

Sunday: Jupiter is six fists above the southwestern horizon at 9:00 p.m.

Monday: “Oooo, they’re little runaways. Orion’s stars moved fast. Tried to make a getaway. Ooo-oo, they’re little runaways,” sang Bon Jovi in his astronomical hit “Runaway. At least that’s what I hear when I listen to the song. After all, it fits the recently calculated trajectory of AE Aurigae, Mu Columbae, and 53 Arietis. Extrapolating the actual motion of these three stars back in time, they were all in the location of the star-forming region called the Orion Nebula a few million years ago. What kicked these stars out? Not paying rent? Excessive partying? No, it was simply gravitational interactions with near-by stars. Find out more about the eviction at http://goo.gl/UeLwKQ. The Orion Nebula is visible with the naked eye from a very dark site, about two fists above the southwestern horizon at 10:00 p.m.

Tuesday: The moon is about one and a half fists above due south at 6:30 a.m. The bright star Arcturus is about a pinky width above it.

Wednesday: “The crow rises in the southeast,” said spy number one. “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize that code,” replied spy number two. Spy one exclaimed, “That’s because it’s not a code, you idiot. I’m talking about the constellation Corvus the crow.” This unbelievably bad spy movie dialogue is to remind you that Corvus had an unbelievably bad life. According to one myth, Corvus brought the god Apollo the news that his girlfriend was seeing someone else. In a classic case of punishing the messenger, Apollo turned the formerly beautifully colored crow black. The box-shaped Corvus is one fist above the southeastern horizon at 11:00 p.m.

Thursday: While you were looking through your underwear drawer for clean socks, some citizen scientists were looking through sky maps obtained by robotic telescopes to find brown dwarfs. The project, called Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors, allows anyone with a computer and internet connection to search through thousands of images to find these strange objects that are midway between being classified as large planets and small stars. Some brown dwarfs can have surface temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius. The recently discovered ones are cooler than the boiling point of water and may even have clouds of water vapor! Read more about the discovery and how you can participate in this project at https://noirlab.edu/public/blog/newly-launched-backyard-worlds/.

Friday: If you are lucky, you may be able to see Mercury just above the eastern horizon at 6:50 a.m.

The positional information in this column about stars and planets is typically accurate for the entire week. For up-to-date information about the night sky, go to https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/planner.cfm. All times are Pacific Time unless noted.