Марс та Рея Сільвія/Пітер Рубенс
A rare photo shows an extremely bright Mars next to the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, Regulus.
The constellation of Leo consists of four stars joined in two pairs located at a distance of 79 light years from Earth. The blue hue comes from the brightest star in the constellation — Regulus, which is about 4.5 times more massive than the Sun. It can often be seen alongside other planets in the solar system and the Moon in the night sky.
Currently, Mars and Regulus appear to be close to each other. Their convergence reached a maximum on June 17, when the angular distance between them was less than one degree. The red planet is now very bright at night due to its position relative to the Earth and the Sun.
June 16 The Virtual Telescope Project in Italy has taken photos of Mars and Regulus that are almost equally bright If you look closely, you can see a blurry, faint spot of light between Mars and Regulus, located a little closer to the blue star. This is the ghostly trace of the dwarf galaxy Leo I, which is located about 820 thousand light-years from Earth.
Mars and Regulus will remain close to each other until June 22. Now they are not so close to each other, but they can still be seen together with the naked eye. The best time to observe is right after dusk, when the sky is absolutely clear. Next time Regulus will be visible next to the Moon on June 29, and then on July 26 and August 23.
Not so long ago we wrote, NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance has captured a rare photo of Mars’ tiny moon Deimos at dawn. On March 1 of this year, at 4:27 a.m. local time, Perseverance captured the glow from the smaller of the Red Planet’s two satellites, Deimos. The rover used its left navigation camera to create the images with a long shutter speed of about 3.28 seconds.
In addition, Perseverance recently took the first ever photos of the aurora borealis on Mars from the planet’s surface. The aurorae were photographed in March 2024, after a stream of solar particles from a coronal mass ejection collided with the Red Planet’s magnetic field. This excited the gas in the planet’s thin atmosphere, which began to emit light, similar to the way the northern lights appear on Earth.
Source: LiveScience
