The image shows the stellar environment at the edge of the constellations Taurus and Perseus, which is dominated by the bright planet Mars, complemented by the Pleiades and Hyades clusters, the California Nebula, and interstellar matter clouds.
“The film draws attention to the fact that on March 4, 2021, 26 minutes after midnight, the planet Mars was angularly closest to the Pleiades star cluster for the next 17 years,” said astrophotographer Horálek .
In the right conditions, the current sky offers, among other things, star clusters in the constellation of Taurus – Hyades and Pleiades – that are visible to the naked eye even from larger cities. It is during this period that the planet Mars is located, in which a Perseverance vehicle landed on February 18.
Furthermore, Mars will pass near both star clusters in the next few days. The constellation is captured in NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day.
He made exposures of 63 minutes
To take a photograph of his cabin in the Chrudim region, the author needed relatively light equipment: a full-frame SLR camera with a light lens mounted on a light stand mounted on a photographic tripod. A special filter was placed in front of the lens to filter out unwanted light pollution.
Horálek took 63-minute exposures, which he then mathematically combined into a single image to suppress unwanted noise, and also used other adjustments to highlight objects in distant space.
This is the second NASA image from the Institute of Physics in Opava and NASA image 28 of this photographer and astronomer. It is also the 16th NASA Day image, which was taken in the Czech Republic.
In early January, the United States Space Agency published an image of the University of Opava, which was taken last December during an expedition to Chile for a total solar eclipse.
| A more detailed description of the current slide |
| The image shows the stellar environment on the border of the constellations of Taurus and Perseus with the planet Mars. The planet Mars (bottom) angularly passed closer to the Pleiades cluster in Taurus on the night of March 4, 2021, and a larger angular zoom did not occur until 2038. Mars and the Pleiades are at the bottom of the image. The red planet is now as bright as the orange giant Aldebaran (left), which is about 67 light years away. About twice as far away are the stars of the Hyada cluster, which surround Aldebaran in Earth’s sky. Prolonged exposure revealed numerous dark nebulae permeating the entire constellation of Taurus, molecular clouds, and other star clusters. However, the most beautiful nebula in the image is the NGC1499 nebula called California, due to its shape reminiscent of the peninsula of the same name on the American continent. It is already in the neighboring constellation Perseus, about 1,000 light-years away. |
NASA’s Astronomy Picture Of the Day (APOD) is an award for the most interesting astronomical photo of the day, carefully selected for each day and complemented by editors Jerry Bonnell of Michigan University of Technology and Robert Nemiroff of the University of Maryland , NASA collaborators.