{"id":335195,"date":"2026-03-08T10:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T10:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/335195\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T10:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T10:07:14","slug":"the-sky-today-on-saturday-march-7-venus-meets-saturn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/335195\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sky Today on Saturday, March 7: Venus meets Saturn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tTwo planets meet in the evening sky after sunset. Use bright Venus to easily find your way to fainter, more distant Saturn.\t\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tAfter sunset on the 7th, use bright Venus to guide you to fainter Saturn. If you can’t see the ringed planet by eye, try using binoculars. Credit: Astronomy: Roen Kelly\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full\u00a0Sky This Week<\/a>\u00a0column.\u00a0<\/p>\n

March 6: Io\u2019s turn to transit<\/a><\/p>\n

Today our focus is on the evening sky as Venus and Saturn sit close together in the west. About 30 minutes after sunset, brilliant Venus should be visible some 7\u00b0 above the horizon. Tonight, 1st-magnitude Saturn lies to its upper left \u2014 use binoculars or any telescope to look roughly 1\u00b0 southeast of Venus to find the ringed planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the two worlds so close, it\u2019s easy to compare them. Venus\u2019 disk spans 10\u201d and has just a sliver in shadow, showing off a 97-percent-lit gibbous. Saturn, though much farther from Earth, is physically much larger than Venus and spans 16\u201d, with rings that stretch some 36\u201d from end to end. It appears fully illuminated, with the southern face of the rings now visible to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pair will set some 70 minutes after the Sun. You can come back and observe them again tomorrow, when the two worlds are still the same distance apart, but now with Saturn south of Venus in the sky, appearing to Venus\u2019 lower left.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sunrise:\u00a06:24 A.M.
Sunset:\u00a05:59 P.M.
Moonrise:\u00a010:43 P.M.
Moonset:\u00a08:02 A.M.
Moon Phase:\u00a0Waning gibbous (79%)
*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Two planets meet in the evening sky after sunset. Use bright Venus to easily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,7882,82,44123,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-335195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-observing","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sky-tonight","13":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}