Heads up, stargazers! The waxing crescent moon will glide close to the Pleiades tonight and tomorrow (March 22-23), putting on a gorgeous display as its upturned crescent shines close to the ancient light of the open star cluster.<\/p>\n
Look to the western horizon after sunset on March 22 to find the Pleiades<\/a> glowing 5 degrees above the 14%-lit sickle-like form of the waxing moon<\/a> \u2014 roughly the width of your three middle fingers held at arm’s length against the sky.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The orange-red star Aldebaran can be found around this time, shining to the left of the Pleiades along with the “V” formation of stars<\/a> that form the Hyades cluster in the constellation Taurus<\/a>. Venus<\/a>, meanwhile, will shine close to the horizon as a fleeting “evening star<\/a>,” swiftly disappearing from sight after the sun<\/a>, while Jupiter<\/a> glows high overhead in Gemini.<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Under dark skies, the Pleiades will appear as a hazy patch of light to the naked eye but will reveal its seven brightest members \u2014 along with dozens more of its blue-white stars\u2014 through a pair of binoculars. By tomorrow night (March 23), the crescent moon will have leapt above the Pleiades on a course that will see it leapfrog Jupiter in the coming week.<\/p>\n The Pleiades have been known to humanity since ancient times and may even have been depicted in the Nebra Sky Disk, a 3,800-year-old bronze artifact that represents the most ancient depiction of the night sky discovered to date.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Today’s best Celestron NexStar 4SE deals<\/p>\n Thousands of years later, famed astronomer Galileo Galilei<\/a> made the first observations of the open star cluster with a telescope, revealing dozens more of its blue-white stars. The Pleiades remains a spectacular sight today through a pair of 10X50 binoculars or a telescope, even the most modest of which would astound the old scientist who first examined the deep sky object in detail.<\/p>\n Our understanding of the enigmatic cluster continues to evolve. Only recently, astronomers discovered that the Pleiades may have 20 times more stars than was originally believed, with thousands of long-lost siblings now spread across the night sky.<\/p>\n Hoping to get a closer look at the Pleiades? Then you’d do well to read our roundups of the best telescopes<\/a> and binoculars for exploring the night sky<\/a>, If you’re interested in photography, be sure to check out our beginner’s guide to imaging the night sky<\/a>, along with our picks of the best cameras<\/a> and lenses for astrophotography<\/a>.<\/p>\n Editor’s Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com’s readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heads up, stargazers! The waxing crescent moon will glide close to the Pleiades tonight and tomorrow (March 22-23),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-342583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}