M44 / Praesepe (Jan Beránek)

M44 / Praesepe

Praesepe, in latin "Cradle" or "Manger" - also going by other name, a Beehive Cluster (M44) - is an open star cluster in the constellation of Cancer.
At the distance of 577 light years from Earth, it is one of the closest star clusters to us.
It contains about a thousand of young stars. 'Young' in cosmological scales though, as in this case it means 600 million years.
The cluster spans across 15 light years, which means that thanks to its proximity to Earth, its diameter appears as an equivalent of three Moons.
The brightest of its stars are either blueish (hot ones) or yellowish (colder ones, like our Sun).
Thanks to our increasing ability to detect planets around distant stars, in 2012 scientists discovered two such planets orbiting Sun-like stars in the cluster.
Because the cluster contains quite bright stars, it was already noticed in the ancient times. The Greeks used its obscured visibility by gathering clouds to forecast rain.
The old Latin term Praesepe stems from the Greek mythology. They imagined that this cluster is a manger, from which two donkeys (bright stars in the Cancer constellation, one to the north and one to the south of the cluster), are eating. These were supposed to be the donkeys on which the Greek gods Dionysos and Silenius rode into the battle with Titans, and by scaring the enemy by their loud braying, helped them win.

NOTE: It's not one of my best photos... the cores of the stars are overexposed (60 secs with f/1.9 and gain 100 is too much - next time i will dial the gain down to zero) and there are still some artifacts around the bright stars, probably caused by sub-optimal cable arrangement in front of the SCT's corrector plate. But i am putting it out and am done, for the moment, with this object... crossing 27 out of the 110 in Messier's catalogue.

Messier catalogue
Star Clusters

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
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Mix of multiple sources
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Unknown

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9127473
PixInsight job	9Y85I09FK54EQ36UCE6BSAXATM0BYKZP
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	08h40m15s.70
RA (top/left)	08h36m06s.50
RA (top/right)	08h37m55s.00
RA (bottom/right)	08h44m24s.40
RA (bottom/left)	08h42m38s.65

Dec (center)	+19°38′50″.4
Dec (top/left)	+20°42′12″.2
Dec (top/right)	+18°19′13″.3
Dec (bottom/right)	+18°35′21″.4
Dec (bottom/left)	+20°58′23″.1

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M44 / Praesepe

M44 / Praesepe

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M44 / Praesepe

M44 / Praesepe

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