What is the Moon doing in March?
The Moon in March
In general, we can tell what the Moon will look like, when it will be visible, and in what direction to look for it, just by working out how many days it is since New Moon. The details are here.
But we can predict this more accurately by noticing that the Moon mimics, every month, the way the Sun behaves over the course of a whole year.
Here is a schematic diagram of how the Moon behaves in March.
Immediately after New Moon, the crescent Moon behaves like the Sun in early summer. It's moving northwards; the time of moonrise doesn't change much from one day to the next, but the time of moonset gets later every evening, and it sets further right along the horizon each night.
The Moon reaches First Quarter at its northernmost point, when it's behaving like the Sun at midsummer, in June: the Moon rises in the north-east (in the middle of the morning) and it stays above the horizon for over 18 hours (all the rest of the day and well into the night) before setting in the north-west (in the early hours of the following morning).
As it waxes to gibbous and then Full, the Moon is moving southwards again, like the Sun in autumn; moonset doesn't change much from one day to the next, but moonrise gets much later every night, and it shifts from the north-eastern point on the horizon towards south-east.
Around Last Quarter, we can only glimpse the Moon at sunrise, coming up in the south-east. It behaves like the midwinter Sun, barely showing over the horizon.
As it wanes to a narrow "crescent", the Moon is starting to climb northwards again. But it is still south of the Sun, so it will still be hard to see.
However, the Moon doesn't follow the
Sun's path exactly. To find out what
difference that makes, try clicking here.