Home » NASA’s June skywatching ideas embrace Mars within the Beehive

NASA’s June skywatching ideas embrace Mars within the Beehive

by Anjali Anjali
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NASA is again once more with its month-to-month roundup of what to look out for within the sky over the approaching weeks.

Kicking proper off with Thursday and Friday, Mars finds itself within the Beehive Cluster, a bunch of stars also called Praesepe or M44 that’s round 600 gentle years away.

“The pairing will make for excellent viewing by means of binoculars or a small telescope, with a sparkle of faint stars surrounding the rust-colored disk of Mars,” NASA stated on its web site.

To make it straightforward to pick Mars and the Beehive, strive one in every of these glorious astronomy apps in your smartphone.

Throughout this month you you too can witness Mars and Venus showing to maneuver nearer collectively within the western sky after sundown. NASA notes {that a} crescent moon will move by means of from June 20 by means of June 22, making for a putting spectacle at nightfall on June 21.

Early birds, in the meantime, can catch Saturn and Jupiter rising earlier than daybreak. The two planets shall be seen within the jap aspect of the sky earlier than dawn all through June, and on June 14 Jupiter will rise with the crescent moon.

NASA additionally recommends looking for Spica and Arcturus, two notably shiny stars.

“Orange large Arcturus is the brightest star in Bootes, the herdsman,” the area company defined. “It’s the fourth brightest star within the sky. It’s a lot nearer than Spica, at a distance of about 37 gentle years. It’s additionally fairly an previous star, in comparison with our solar, at an age of 7-8 billion years.”

Finally, NASA notes that June 21 is the Summer Solstice within the Northern Hemisphere, and Winter Solstice within the Southern Hemisphere. This means the longest day for the north by way of daylight as our nearest star tracks its highest, longest path throughout the sky, and the shortest within the south, the place the solar stays low. Watch NASA’s video on the high of this web page to learn how the summer season solstice helped the traditional Greeks 2,200 years in the past to calculate the scale of our planet with spectacular accuracy.

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