Thursday, June 15th, is a special night. En route to Saturn, Mars will pass directly in front of the Beehive. Ready your binoculars or even a telescope now! Red Mars is about 16 times brighter than the surrounding stars. “It’ll look like a red supernova has gone off inside the cluster–a wonderful photo-op for amateur astronomers”, Spaceweather.com said.
On Saturday, June 17th, Mars and Saturn draw so close together you might think they’re going to collide. Mercury, meanwhile, hovers just below. You must not miss this! 
Mars passes 0.6° north of brighter Saturn. Low-power, rich-field telescopes will show both planets in the same field of view. Mars is the foreground object, lying 212 million miles from Earth, while Saturn lies 917 million miles away. Even though it’s more than 4 times farther away, Saturn’s disk appears larger than Mars’ because of its physical superiority. The ringed planet spans 75,000 miles, some 18 times larger than Mars. 
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