Hanging Out in the Crib

Amateur astronomy has a bit of a reputation for needing significant and sophisticated equipment to enjoy. And if you are looking to target faint objects, or dive into photography, well then there is certainly some truth to that. But the universe has so much to offer, and some of those items really do not need much more than a nice venue and a pair of binoculars (or your eyes) to touch your soul.

One such type of event is an appulse¹, "an approach between two celestial bodies." As the Moon makes its monthly trek along the ecliptic it will often pair with one of the brighter planets. Due to the various inclinations of their orbits to the ecliptic sometimes we have wide space between the two, or on rarer occasion the Moon will cover up (occult) the object for a period of time. There are also four 1^st magnitude stars that lie sufficiently close to the ecliptic that they can sometimes be visited in the sky by one of the denizens of our solar system. I'll leave it as a research project for those interested in identifying them if you're not familiar with that quartet.

A little more subtle (unless, perhaps, you are in very dark skies) are the three open clusters that lie close enough to the ecliptic to also host one of the planets. Interestingly, these all lie in the Winter Zodiac. The Pleaides is the brightest and most spectacular of the trio. It also lies the farthest off the ecliptic at 4° and so will have infrequent visitors. Every 8 years Venus drops by for a visit to the Seven Sisters, making for a beautiful alignment. 

Venus Amid Pleaides

While M35 in Gemini does not have a catchy moniker, it does own the inside post position to the ecliptic, lying only 52 arc-minutes away. As a result it is more common to see interlopers jog by it, especially Jupiter which has a low inclination to the ecliptic and so unable to stray far from it. It is also noteworthy that M35 comes very close to the point in the heavens where the Sun reaches its greatest northern culmination (i.e., the Summer Solstice) - a conjunction that we can never observe unless there were a Total Solar Eclipse in progress. Talk about your rare event!

The Sumer Solstice - June 21, 2023 11am EDT

Finally we have M44, the "Beehive" cluster in Cancer. A little more than a degree off the ecliptic it also is in position to allow the occasional planetary orb to join its aviary for a night or two. While not as dense or showy as the other two clusters, it is still easily visible to the naked eye from dark skies and was known in antiquity as Praesepe (the "crib"). Sailors used it as a barometer since if it was hidden from view by a veil of thin cirrus clouds then overcast skies and possibly rain was in store for the next day.

All spring there has been a celestial chase between the Goddess of Love and the God of War unfolding in the evening twilight. Venus has been gaining on the Red planet, pursuing him through Taurus, Gemini, and now Cancer. In early June Mars attempted to hide himself among the stars of M44 for a couple of days while Venus drew near to Castor and Pollux to seemingly inquire as to his whereabouts. The dual appulses were beautiful and could be appreciated by one's eyes or simple binoculars. I happened to be at South Bethany in Delaware visiting my sister those evenings, and sitting out back along the canal watching the scene emerge as darkness fell was simple & sublime. 

While I couldn't take my scope, my Canon camera and a tripod were easy to bring and allowed me to create my own postcard souvenir of the trip. Taking a series of 10-sec shots at 18mm captured all the players on stage, and then as darkness fell a set of 3-sec shots at 55mm allowed Mars to have the spotlight as a ruby set amid the glittering bees. Simple processing in freeware such as Deep Sky Stacker and Sequator produced wonderful results with additional enhancement in Photoshop.

Appulses and other simple pleasures of the night sky are encountered multiple times a year. Don't overlook the opportunity they provide to sit back and drink in the profound majesty of the heavens in an uncomplicated way.

¹ This is basically another term for a conjunction