MARS AND 'THE CRIB' CLUSTER

This June, the early evening sky is majestically graced by the presence of two dominant planets, Venus and Mars. These celestial bodies outshine other objects in the sky with their radiant glow. Notably, on June 3rd, Mars made a transit across the stars of M44, popularly known as 'The Crib'. This stunning open cluster is located 600 light-years away from us, in the direction of the Cancer constellation.

'The Crib' is among the nearest open clusters to Earth. It is visible to the naked eye as a faint nebulous spot of apparent fourth magnitude. However, to discern its individual stars, one needs binoculars at the very least. It's interesting to note that 'The Crib' was among the first celestial objects to be studied through an instrument. Galileo, using his telescope in 1609, was able to distinguish approximately 40 stars in this cluster.

Of course, 'The Crib' contains far more stars than what Galileo observed back in the 17th century. Recent estimates suggest that the cluster is home to just over a thousand stars. These include 68 percent red dwarfs, 30 percent solar-type stars of classes F, G, and K, and the remaining 2 percent are bright A-type stars. The estimated total mass of this cluster is approximately 500-600 times that of the sun.

With an estimated age of around 600-700 million years, 'The Crib' has already witnessed the life cycle of its most massive stars. These O and B spectral type stars have either exploded into supernovae or transformed into white dwarfs, some of which have indeed been identified within the cluster itself.

Credit: Rolando Ligustri.