The Beehive

Canon 600D DSLR, Altair-Astro Field-flattener and 0.8x focal reducer and 127mm Meade Apo-refractor. Taken from our Backyard in February 2016

The Italian  astronomer Galileo was the first to observe this open star cluster with a telescope in 1609. Prior to this observation the Ancient Greeks recorded what they saw with the naked eye as "a little cloud". Galileo with the aid of his very rudimentary telescope was able, for the first time, to resolve the patch of nebulosity and to see a collection of stars. The Greeks and Romans saw this object as a 'manger' from which two donkeys, the adjacent stars Asellus Borealis and Asellus Australis were feeding. The Ancient Chinese saw this nebulosity as a ghost or demon riding in a carriage and likened its appearance to "a cloud of pollen blown from willow catkins".

In 1769, Charles Messier added the Beehive Cluster to his famous list of nebulous objects as M44.
The Behive Cluster has a number of diffent names and labels that are still used commonly today:

• The Beehive
• The Manger (Praesepe)
• Messier 44
• NGC2632

The Beehive Cluster can be found in the constellation Cancer 'The Crab' and contains stars with a combined mass equivalent to 500-600 times the mass of our Sun.  The cluster is between 520 and 610 light years distant and is approximately 600 million years old.  The Beehive shares an age and proper motion with the Hyades star cluster in Taurus and is therefore considered to have a common origin. Both the Beehive and Hyades clusters contain red giant and white dwarf stars.

Credits: Information from Wikipedia