M44 (Gary Imm) - AstroBin

M44

This Messier open star cluster, nicknamed the Beehive Cluster, is located about 600 light years away in the constellation of Cancer. This is one of the nearest open clusters to Earth and one of the brightest Messier objects in terms of overall magnitude, behind only Pleiades and the Andromeda Galaxy.

The cluster contains over 1,000 stars, with the brightest individual star at about magnitude 6.5. The field of view, at just over 3 degrees, is wider than normal for a Messier open cluster. I like the variety of blue and orange star colors throughout the cluster.

The nicknames of this cluster are interesting. The cluster is not resolvable into individual stars, but the overall glow from the cluster is seen by the naked eye to be like a glow or cloud. Galileo was the first person to resolve the cluster into stars in 1609. The modern nickname for it, originating in the U.S. and Britain in about 1840, is the Beehive. The older Greek names included "Little Cloud" and "Little Mist." All of these names make sense to me. The puzzling nickname to me is the original one, Praesepe, the Roman name which means manger or stall. The cluster transits around Christmas time, so that makes sense for a nativity manger. But I never understood how this cluster could be seen as a wooden manger when the cluster is not resolvable to the naked eye. But then I read that the cluster is not the wooden manger, but the straw in the manger. To see the actual manger, you have to look wider. The straw of M42 is framed nicely into a manger by 4 bright, colored stars in the broader naked eye view (see the sky atlas snapshot in Revision C above).

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C

C

Description: Sky Atlas wide view of "Manger" as described in the Description

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7140072
PixInsight job	OAQDST593G0QX9AYFJ175DZAPUYBFF05
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	08h40m22s.25
RA (top/left)	08h47m11s.49
RA (top/right)	08h33m45s.42
RA (bottom/right)	08h33m38s.15
RA (bottom/left)	08h46m53s.78

Dec (center)	+19°40′20″.9
Dec (top/left)	+20°40′59″.5
Dec (top/right)	+20°45′22″.9
Dec (bottom/right)	+18°38′45″.8
Dec (bottom/left)	+18°34′25″.7

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M44

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