Both planets will appear just a little more than a half degree apart—equal to about the width of the full moon. Over the course of the week, Venus will quickly pull away from the fainter, ruddy Mars and sink towards the eastern horizon.

Located in the constellation Cancer, the crab, the stunning open cluster of stars, is bright enough to be just visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy spot. Also known also as Messier 44, it is one of the closest clusters to Earth, at 577 light-years away.

Binoculars and small telescopes, however, will reveal about six dozen member stars stretching across 11 light years of space, but appear to span same chuck of Earth’s sky that two full