Some welcome breaks in the cold lately have made it feel like spring is just around the corner. I was shocked to see a bumblebee a few days ago, and it reminded me of one of my favorite celestial objects - M44, the Beehive Cluster.
The “M” in M44 stands for Messier. First published in 1774, Charles Messier’s Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters lists 110 deep sky objects, known collectively as Messier objects.
Many of the objects in the Messier catalog are visible in binoculars. While binoculars aren’t great for long duration viewing, they’re an ideal grab and go solution to check out the Moon, planets, Messier objects, comets, and other night sky targets. They’re also relatively inexpensive and useful for other things - like birding. If you get a pair and decide astronomy isn’t for you, at least you still have a pair of binoculars.
M44 is an open cluster. Open clusters are groups of stars that were born together in the same molecular cloud, but which are now drifting apart. The Beehive Cluster is about 600 million years old, much younger than our 4.5-billion-year-old solar system. Some of the more massive stars in the cluster have already reached the end of their lives, but most stars in the cluster have billions of years before they meet their end. The stars will continue to spread out over time, until little trace of the cluster remains. The Beehive is only about 600 light years away, making it one of the closest star clusters to Earth.
The Beehive is one of my favorites because it’s great from any viewpoint. A moderately dark sky will allow you see the cluster as a fairly large fuzzy patch right in the middle of the constellation Cancer. Binoculars allow you to start picking out individual stars and start seeing the cluster for what it is, a ball of about a thousand stars. Through a telescope, tens to more than a hundred individual stars appear, like drones whirling about the hive. The more time you spend at the eyepiece, the more stars you’ll see.
One of my favorites too!