Mars and Pleiades Conjunction

By Ronald Williams

Beginning on March 3, Mars was within 2.6 degrees of the Pleiades star cluster. That’s the closest Mars-Pleiades conjunction since January 20, 1991, when Mars passed 1.7 degrees of the Pleiades. To put the conjunction into perspective, one degree on the night sky is about the width of your little finger at arm’s length. They will be close for the next few days and will not get this close again until 2038, so you definitely do not want to miss this spectacle. Look high in the west an hour or two after sunset. The conjunction is visible to the naked eye, but a pair of binoculars will make the sight even better.