Astro events to keep on your radar

“AstroBob” Bob King says there are a couple must-see events in the night sky in the coming days.

Mars and the Beehive Star Cluster: “The planet Mars will be passing directly in front of a star cluster called the beehive- because it looks like a swarm of bees. You can’t see the cluster with the naked eye.” Bob recommends using a pair of binoculars.

“Find Mars and then that brilliant star Venus and look one fist to the upper left. And find those tiny little sprinkles.”

Full Strawberry Moon: “June 3rd, Saturday evening, it will rise a few minutes after sunset. We have Lake Superior there for us to see any moon rise… At moon rise, you know what color it is: it’s a deep orange. That’s because when we look at the rising moon on the horizon, it’s filtered by the air. That’s because we look through the thick air. It filters away the blue and the green, and it just leaves red and orange.

“It does one other weird thing too. When the moon comes up at the horizon, the air acts like prism and lifts the bottom half of the moon up into the top half and squishes the moon together so it’s shaped like an oval.”