Earlier this evening at midnight, I set up my camera and tripod in the backyard to capture some really good shots of the Waning Gibbous Moon, Mars, and the faint Beehive Star Cluster in the eastern sky.
In the wider shots y'all can see Luna and Mars along with some of the brighter stars like the Gemini Twins: Castor and Pollux, as well as Procyon. In the more close-up shots the distant Beehive Star Cluster becomes more visible just outside Luna's glare, along with two of the brighter stars of the Constellation Cancer The Crab: Asellus Borealis and Asellus Australis. Both of these stars mark the location of the Beehive in the night sky.
The Beehive Star Cluster (also known as the M44 Cluster) is an open cluster in the barely visible Constellation Cancer, and one of the nearest star clusters to our Solar System at a distance of something around 520 to 610 light-years (or between 160 to 187 parsecs) from the Sun.
Y'all should keep an eye on the 4th planet from the Sun over the next couple months. Mars will remain in the vicinity of the Constellation Cancer for the rest of the year as the Red Planet continues to get larger and brighter towards its two year opposition to the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. It takes Mars about 687 days to orbit the Sun, compared to the 365 days our own Earth takes in its smaller orbit.
By the end of the month, Mars will actually move lower eastward towards the Beehive Cluster and remain there for a week, or so; but then, by mid-December, will begin to move higher back westward in the night sky back towards Pollux and the Constellation Gemini by the end of the year. This retrograde motion of Mars will occur between December 6, 2024 until February 23, 2025 as we Earthlings pass our small planetary neighbor in orbit.
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