Orbits of Planets Mars & Venus cross Beehive Star Cluster | NOIRLab
In 2025, Mars and Venus both made striking planetary conjunctions with the open star cluster Messier 44, also known as Praesepe, or the Beehive Cluster. The Beehive Cluster is located about 600 light-years away in the constellation Cancer and contains roughly a thousand stars within a core about 23 light-years across. This makes it one of the nearest and richest open clusters to Earth. The planetary apparitions are combined in this composite time-lapse image, created by Petr Horálek, NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador.
The traversing of Mars (above) in this image occurred from late April to early May in 2025. Its nightly positions were captured from observatories in Chile, Bolivia, and the Czech Republic. The site in Chile, Cerro Pachón, is home to four NOIRLab-operated telescopes, including Gemini South, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by NSF NOIRLab. The passage of Venus (below) took place from late August to early September in 2025, when Venus briefly appeared during early morning twilight.
The Beehive Cluster (also known as Praesepe (Latin for "manger", "cot" or "crib"), M44, NGC 2632, or Cr 189) is an open cluster in the constellation Cancer. One of the nearest open clusters to Earth, it contains a larger population of stars than other nearby bright open clusters holding around 1,000 stars. Under dark skies, the Beehive Cluster looks like a small nebulous object to the naked eye, and has been known since ancient times. Classical astronomer Ptolemy described it as a "nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer". It was among the first objects that Galileo studied with his telescope.
Release Date: Dec. 31, 2025
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