Earlier this month, Mars drifted past Pollux and Castor in Gemini. Over the next 10 days, Mars moves through the heart of Cancer and across the star cluster M44. Bring out the binoculars to see this event in the western sky at 10 p.m between May 18 and 26. On May 19, the Red Planet will be next to the dim star Eta Cancri. You need to look carefully, as they will be quite close. Mars' glare may overwhelming, but it's worth a try.
On May 22 and 23, Mars moves just above M44. This whole scene is contained in a box of stars: Gamma, Eta, Theta, and Delta Cancri. At this time, Mars will be only 167,000,000 miles from our little blue world while the stars of M44 will be 500 x 5,900,000,000,000 miles away.
Such is our view from Earth ...
No comments:
Post a Comment