  We consider various approaches to treat the phases of a qutrit. Although it
is possible to represent qutrits in a convenient geometrical manner by
resorting to a generalization of the Poincare sphere, we argue that the
appropriate way of dealing with this problem is through phase operators
associated with the algebra su(3). The rather unusual properties of these
phases are caused by the small dimension of the system and are explored in
detail. We also examine the positive operator-valued measures that can describe
the qutrit phase properties.
