Good evening fellow stargazers!
This evening a couple of hours after sunset, your favorite blogger went out in my front yard and managed to capture several really good close-up shots of the conjunction between the planet Mars and the Pleiades Star Cluster in the western sky.
Mars swings 2.6 degrees south of the Pleiades, which appears on our sky’s dome as a tiny, misty dipper of stars. This will be the closest conjunction of the Red Planet and the Pleiades until 2038.
The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters or Messier 45, is a star cluster located in the Constellation Taurus the Bull.
The nine brightest stars in the cluster represent the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone; and their parents, the nymph Pleione and the Titan Atlas.
The Pleiades are one of the nearest star clusters to Earth. Its brightest stars lie at an estimated distance of between 390 and 460 light years. The cluster is mostly composed of hot, blue, highly luminous Type B Stars with an estimated age under 100 million years.
Despite this, spotting the Pleiades at night can be kinda hard without a visual aid for some folks if y'all don't know where to look.
The best ways to spot the Pleiades in the sky dome is to look for the Constellation Orion The Hunter and follow a line from the "Orion's Belt" asterism to the bright star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus the Bull. The Pleiades can be spotted near the "Eye of the Bull" Aldebaran. I highlighted this in my second photo -- a wide shot of both constellations and the line from Orion's Belt to Aldebaran and the Seven Sisters.
The Seven Sisters are most prominent in the sky dome between October and April. In February it lies overhead in the evening. In May, it sets at sunset, before Orion. As the cluster lies near the ecliptic (the Sun’s path across the sky), it can’t be seen in May and June, because it is located too close to the Sun. By early November, the cluster rises in the east after sunset.
Be sure to check them out with a telescope, or a really good pair of binoculars, or camera lens.
I hope you enjoyed this evening's photographic offerings. Have a wonderful Dixie night, and y'all be sure to keep your eyes to the night skies, folks!
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