On the nights of May 21st through the 23rd 2008, Mars passed thought M44 the"Beehive Cluster". I missed the first night but on the second and third nights I managed to observe the passage, and sketched it. On the night of the 23rd it was a rather brief observation, through a short break in the weather. I wasn't able to sketch for very long before the setting scene buried itself in the clouds along the horizon. This accounts for the lack of fainter stars in the second sketch.

When I inverted the sketchs, the pale orange dots that were Mars turned blue. My limited processing skills prevented me from just turning my little pencil smudges back to orange, so I just replaced them with computer generated orange dots. I'm not totally happy with the artificial look but it's what it is until I figure it out.

I had hoped to get sketches of all three nights but as often is the case the weather didn't fully cooperate. Still, I'm happy with what I got. I think it show nicely the planets movement over a days period.

This is how I saw Mars in the "Beehive", using my f/8, 6 inch dob at 30X magnification. The FOV is just slightly under 2 degrees.