{"id":521033,"date":"2026-06-27T10:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T10:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/521033\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T10:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T10:12:10","slug":"the-sky-today-on-saturday-june-27-mars-meets-the-pleiades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/521033\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sky Today on\u00a0Saturday, June 27: Mars meets the Pleiades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tThe Red Planet, now in Taurus the Bull, sits less than 5\u00b0 from the Pleiades star cluster in the predawn sky.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1137\" height=\"769\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mars-Pleiades.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"A simulated predawn sky looking east on June 27, 2026, 90 minutes before sunrise. Mars glows as a bright orange-red point just below and to the right of the Pleiades star cluster, which sparkles with its distinctive grouping of blue-white stars. Uranus is labeled as a faint dot below Mars, and the sky fades from deep blue to a subtle twilight glow near the horizon.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Red Planet rises along with the Pleiades in the early-morning sky. You can view them together in the east about 90 minutes before sunrise. Uranus is also in this region of the sky, albeit low enough that it will likely require optical aid to spot. Credit: Stellarium\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/observing\/the-sky-this-week-from-june-26-to-july-3-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky This Week<\/a>\u00a0column.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\">June 26: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/observing\/the-sky-today-friday-june-26-2026\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mercury closes in on Jupiter<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left wp-block-paragraph\">Mars now lies in Taurus, visible in the early-morning sky before sunrise. Today, the Red Planet is less than 5\u00b0 from the famous Pleiades star cluster (M45). If you happen to be up roughly an hour and a half before sunrise, you can try to catch them, low in the eastern sky.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By 4 A.M. local daylight time, Mars has reached an altitude of about 8\u00b0. Glowing at magnitude 1.3, it\u2019s a relatively bright point of light low in the east. To its upper left is the Pleiades, a young open cluster of stars and one of the most recognizable naked-eye deep-sky objects, even among beginners. Together with Mars, the Pleiades will slowly rise higher in the east as time passes, but the sky will also grow lighter, washing them out as sunrise approaches.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Moon passes 0.4\u00b0 south of Antares in Scorpius at 11 A.M. EDT, while neither is visible. By this evening, our satellite has moved from Scorpius into Ophiuchus, lying near the border of these two constellations.<\/p>\n<p>Sunrise: 5:33 A.M.<br \/>Sunset: 8:33 P.M.<br \/>Moonrise: 7:10 P.M.<br \/>Moonset: 3:15 A.M.<br \/>Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous (97%)<br \/>*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 10 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alison Klesman\u00a0is senior editor of\u00a0Astronomy\u00a0magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy and has studied a variety of topics, from minor planets to supermassive black holes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List The Red Planet, now in Taurus the Bull, sits less than 5\u00b0 from the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,7882,82,44123],"class_list":["post-521033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-observing","tag-science","tag-sky-tonight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}