Mars' "loop" in Leo

Event Date: May 17th
Time: 8:11(.08) PM

Brief

   Mars has spent alot of time in Leo the Lion over the last several months.  Since early December, it has "looped" south of the constellation's brighter stars, which make up the stick figure shown in the image.  Using the 10-day increment markers, the celestial path below shows it moving west to east (prograde right to left) against the stars, left to right in retrograde, and finally prograde again.  Even before the start of this path, Mars had still spent a few extra weeks in Leo, south of the Sickle, which I talked about in March.
Below we see Mars at transit, which the time above reflects.

click on image to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp

Detailed

   While the loop is impressive, look at one other characteristic of it: the angle.  I left out the ecliptic intentionally, which is a hint to what the Mars has been doing over the last 5 1/2-6 months.  While in prograde in Leo, it started to head south; retrograde brought it more north, and resuming prograde is taking it south again.  The ecliptic latitude is different for both prograde stints, which reflects our perspective of Mars versus the plane of our Sun's path.  The angle itself reminds us that this is the part of the sky where the Sun is going through in late August and early September, when daytime starts to shrink more quickly and dark hours increase.  If we were to extend the path, we would find Mars quickly moving south for the remainder of the spring and throughout summer; it will go through the part of the sky where the Sun does in the autumn and winter for our hemisphere.  I will show this path again next month when it is still spending its last weeks in Leo, and again in July as it starts to catch up with Saturn in Virgo.  Correct-- another visible planetary conjunction isn't far away, although the planets will not be anywhere near as bright as Venus and Jupiter during their Mars Jupiter conjunction.