We had clear sky Wednesday night 14/03/2024, so I decided on clusters and the one that was available to me was M67.
Messier 67 (M67), nicknamed the King Cobra Cluster, is an open cluster located in the northern constellation
Cancer, the Crab. The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 6.1 and lies at an approximate distance of 2,610 to 2,930 light years from Earth. It has the designation NGC 2682 in the New General Catalogue.
Messier 67 can be found roughly halfway and slightly above the imaginary line connecting the bright stars
Regulus in
Leo and
Procyon in
Canis Minor.The cluster lies only 1.75 degrees west of Acubens, Alpha Cancri, a multiple star system with a visual magnitude of 4.20. Acubens is located about 9 degrees southeast of Messier 44, the famous
Beehive Cluster.With an apparent diameter of 30 arc minutes, M67 appears roughly the same size as the full Moon. Small 10×50 binoculars show the cluster as an elongated patch of light, while small telescopes reveal its brightest stars. 6-inch and 8-inch instruments resolve dozens of stars, while 12-inch telescopes reveal about 100 individual stars in the cluster. The best time of year to observe M67 from northern latitudes is during the late winter and early spring.
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