Mars and the Seven Sisters

The first week of March 2021 saw a conjunction of Mars and Pleiades (the Seven Sisters star cluster), the closest one since February 2006. To catch this conjunction in a dark sky, my friends Ugur, Selçuk and I decided to spend the night near Tirilye, a small town northwest of Bursa, and by the coast of Marmara Sea. We settled by an olive grove. We would normally drive back home after the moonrise at 1:30, but the night COVID-safety curfew (between 2100-0500) meant we would stay the whole night.

After midnight, Mars and Pleiades were on the way to setting due west-northwest. I walked to a spot with a relatively open view of that horizon and caught Mars-Pleiades pair together with Aldebaran and Hyades which provided a nice comparison of a bright red star and a larger open cluster. In the foreground are many olive trees, while pines further away shape the horizon.

The second picture shows Mars and Pleiades a bit later when they were closer to the horizon. Even with a clear and transparent sky, bluish color of Pleiades stars look pale and unsaturated, while Mars went even deeper red; the courtesy of our atmosphere in a process known as atmospheric extinction.