2025, March 4: Crescent Moon is Guide to Planet Uranus

March 4, 2025: Tonight’s crescent moon is a guide to Planet Uranus.  Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are easily visible after nightfall.

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by Jeffrey L. Hunt

Mars and Uranus, January 15, 2021.
Chart Caption – 2021, January 15: Mars passes is 2.8° to the upper right of Uranus.

Chicago, Illinois: Sunrise, 6:20 a.m. CST; Sunset, 5:45 p.m. CST.  Check local sources for sunrise and sunset times. Times are calculated by the US Naval Observatory’s MICA computer program.

Moon is Guide to Uranus

The moon guides sky watchers to planet Uranus after evening twilight ends.  The bright crescent moon is in the same binocular field with the distant planet.

Nightly Planet Parade

Venus, Mercury, March 4, 2025
Chart Caption – 2025, March 4: Venus and Mercury are in the western sky after sunset.

Four bright planets are visible after sundown.  Mercury, on its best evening appearance of the year for northern hemisphere sky watchers, is low in the western sky.  At 45 minutes after nightfall, find it nearly 10° above the horizon.  Find a clear horizon in that direction and use a binocular to initially identify the speedy planet.

Venus, quickly departing the evening sky is about 20° above the horizon, about twice Mercury’s height up in the sky.  The brilliant Evening Star is to Mercury’s upper right.  Venus seems to be in a slow-motion fall from the sky, tonight setting 144 minutes after the sun.  It loses about five minutes of setting time each night.

Jupiter and Moon

Jupiter, Moon, March 4, 2025
Chart Caption – 2025, March 4: The crescent moon is to Jupiter’s lower right.

High in the west-southwest, the crescent moon, 31% illuminated, is over halfway from Venus to bright Jupiter, nearly 20° to the Jovian Giant’s lower right.  The crescent is bright enough to cast shadows across the ground.

The lunar orb is 7.2° to the Pleiades star cluster’s lower right.  Use a binocular to see the star cluster in this moonlight.

Jupiter rambles eastward in front of Taurus, 5.6° above Aldebaran, the Bull’s brightest star.  The planet is generally heading toward the horns, Elnath and Zeta Tauri.  It passes between them as Jupiter disappears into bright evening twilight in two months.

Uranus and Moon through Binocular

Planet Uranus and Moon through a binocular, March 4, 2025
Chart Caption – 2025, March 4: Through a binocular, planet Uranus is visible with Jupiter and a starfield slightly brighter than the planet.

Return to this region after the end of evening twilight, 90 minutes after sunset, attempt to see planet Uranus through the binocular, 4.5° to the moon’s lower left.  The planet, slightly dimmer than the identified stars on the accompanying chart, appears as an aquamarine star.

Tonight is the last chance to use the Moon as a guide to find Uranus before it disappears into brighter evening twilight. During the next lunation, the Moon does not pass close enough for both to fit within the same field of view for sky watchers in the Americas. However, by late March, Uranus returns to the same binocular field as the Pleiades.

Mars with Jupiter

Mars, Gemini, March 4, 2025
Chart Caption – 2025, March 4: At 45 minutes after sundown, Mars is in the east-southeast with Gemini.

Mars, the eastern planet in the nightly parade of bright planets, is high in the east-southeast and over 35° to Jupiter’s lower left.  It marches eastward in front of Gemini, 6.9° to Pollux’s upper right and 7.3° to Castor’s lower right.  The Red Planet passes Castor in a wide conjunction on the 21st and Pollux ten nights later.

During the night, the planets appear farther westward. The lunar crescent sets around local midnight followed by Jupiter over an hour later.  Mars sets in the west-northwest before the beginning of morning twilight.

After the sky darkens tonight, use the moon as a guide to find planet Uranus.  The four bright planets are easy to see beginning at mid-twilight.

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