It's a very slim crescent moon you'll find in the west - shortly after sunset - Wednesday evening. Mercury is exceedingly near the sunset glare. Mars is higher up.
The planet Venus is now appearing in the west after sunset and in the east before sunrise. Don't believe it? Astronomer Bruce McClure reports on his observation.
The sun is a disk, not a point of light. Plus Earth’s atmosphere refracts sunlight. For both reasons, we have more than 12 hours of daylight on the day of an equinox.
And Mercury is climbing into it. By late March, Venus will have moved to the east before dawn as Mercury stages its best evening apparition of the year for northern observers.
On March 12, 2017, look east as darkness falls to see a brilliant, full-looking moon. Bright Jupiter will rise shortly after the moon, by early to mid-evening.
Bruce McClure served as lead writer for EarthSky's popular Tonight pages from 2004 to 2021, when he opted for a much-deserved retirement. You can still find many articles at EarthSky.org that were originally written by Bruce, and which the EarthSky editors still update regularly. Bruce is a sundial aficionado, whose love for the heavens has taken him to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and sailing in the North Atlantic, where he earned his celestial navigation certificate through the School of Ocean Sailing and Navigation. He also wrote and hosted public astronomy programs and planetarium programs in and around his home in upstate New York. Bruce he loves cycles of all kinds! You can still find many articles at EarthSky with Bruce's name on them, exploring the various, intricate cycles of the sky.