Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2021 March 4

                               Mars in Taurus
   Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horalek / Institute of Physics in Opava

   Explanation: You can spot Mars in the evening sky tonight. Now home to
   the Perseverance rover, the Red Planet is presently wandering through
   the constellation Taurus, close on the sky to the Seven Sisters or
   Pleiades star cluster. In fact this deep, widefield view of the region
   captures Mars near its closest conjunction to the Pleiades on March 3.
   Below center, Mars is the bright yellowish celestial beacon only about
   3 degrees from the pretty blue star cluster. Competing with Mars in
   color and brightness, Aldebaran is the alpha star of Taurus. The red
   giant star is toward the lower left edge of the frame, a foreground
   star along the line-of-sight to the more distant Hyades star cluster.
   Otherwise too faint for your eye to see, the dark, dusty nebulae lie
   along the edge of the massive Perseus molecular cloud, with the
   striking reddish glow of NGC 1499, the California Nebula, at the upper
   right.

     Please take a short survey in aesthetics & astronomy: Sonification
                   Tomorrow's picture: a little like Mars
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