                  APOD: 2018 April 12 - M22 and the Wanderers

                         Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! [1] Each day a different image or photograph of our
 fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a
                           professional astronomer.

                                2018 April 12
                                      [2]
                            M22 and the Wanderers
                Image Credit & Copyright [3] : Damian Peach [4]

Explanation: Wandering through [5]  the constellation Sagittarius, bright
planets Mars and Saturn appeared together in early morning skies over the last
weeks [6] . They are captured in this 3 degree wide field-of-view from March
31 in a close celestial triangle with large globular star cluster Messier 22
[7] . Of course M22 (bottom left) is about 10,000 light-years distant, a
massive ball of over 100,000 stars much older than our Sun. Pale yellow and
shining by reflected sunlight, Saturn (on top) is about 82 light-minutes away.
Look carefully and you can spot large moon Titan as a pinpoint of light at
about the 5 o'clock position in the glare of Saturn's overexposed disk.
Slightly brighter and redder Mars [8] is 9 light-minutes distant. While both
planets are moving on toward upcoming oppositions, by July Mars will become
much brighter still [9] , with good telescopic views near its 2018 opposition.
Then it will be a mere 3.2 light-minutes from planet Earth.

               Tomorrow's picture: friggatriskaidekaphobia [10]

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Site notes:
  [1] archivepix.html
  [2] image/1804/mars_saturn_m22_2018_03_31dp.jpg
  [3] lib/about_apod.html#srapply
  [4] http://www.damianpeach.com/
  [5] https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/in-depth/
  [6] http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/sky-at-a-glance/
  [7] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/messier-22
  [8] https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/
  [9] http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/
why-is-mars-sometimes-bright-and-sometimes-faint
  [10] ap180413.html
  [11] ap180411.html
  [12] archivepix.html
  [13] lib/apsubmit2015.html
  [14] lib/aptree.html
  [15] https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search
  [16] calendar/allyears.html
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  [20] http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=180412
  [21] ap180413.html
  [22] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/faculty/Nemiroff.html
  [23] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/
  [24] https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/jbonnell/www/bonnell.html
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  [26] lib/about_apod.html#srapply
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