Mars And Beehive Star Cluster Conjunction

Took a couple images of the Mars, Beehive open star cluster conjunction which occurred May 22nd. The Beehive Cluster is located in the constellation Cancer, is anywhere from about 400-750 million years old, 577 light years away and is 16 light years in diameter.


Ancient Greeks called the stars in the sky that seemed to wander, Planetoi. wanderers, hence the word planet, my second image below I took the night after my first shot illustrates the wandering part quite nicely thank you very much.

A cool utility that I used to frame the top image is Pikifx, if you want to email someone a picture you took and make it look a little more finished you can just put a frame around it. The software is totally free and it's one of those things like my fisheye lens and animated images at the bottom of my posts that I will probably overuse, I have a habit of grabbing onto something I really, really like and using it over and over and over and over and over again until I get sick of it and stop, and then remembering about it again and then the cycle repeats itself, over and over again.

Some more cool upcoming conjunctions are happening, one June 7th. the Moon with earthshine and Mars are getting together, look low in the west sky around an hour after Sunset. June 8th. look to the west an hour after Sunset again for a Moon Saturn and Regulus gathering. June 30th. look in the west sky for Saturn, Mars and Regulus grouping and then July 5th. and 6th. west sky again for a Saturn, Mars, Regulus and Moon conjunction, all these conjunctions about an hour after Sunset.

The The Phoenix Mars Lander has gathered its first official scoop and is ready to deposit it into Its' lab's partially open doors, yeah that's right the doors haven't fully opened up, it will take up to a week to study the sample and come back with the results. I'm hoping it will be "We've found water!" instead of the usual "We've found evidence of water."



Totally off space topics and keeping with my overuse problem, I have posted a framed image of a yellow bird that I took while on vacation in BC, I have looked everywhere for the name and type of bird with no luck, can anybody help me out? I would really like to know the type of bird this is.

I'll like to leave you now with my Milky Way image with the exploding meteor as an animated gif, which I call "Shooting Star"