Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - 45

Evenings with the Stars by Fred Schaaf
Sighting
the Beehive
The celestial Crab holds a
misty, naked-eye treasure.
T
his month let's pay a visit to an
open star cluster so fascinating
that it has earned several vivid nicknames
and has even been used to forecast
the weather. The cluster is M44 in
Cancer, the Crab. It's best known as
" the Beehive. "
The Beehive nickname comes from
the cluster's telescopic appearance:
bunches of similarly bright stars (the
" bees " ) gathered into a roughly elliptical,
upright form (the " hive " ). Sounds
intriguing. But M44 is also a very interesting
naked-eye object.
First of all, it's big. Under good conditions,
M44 appears as a fuzzy patch
roughly 1½° across - three Moon diameters
wide. That's wider than the lowpower
field of many telescopes. Second,
it's relatively bright. Of the 88 officially
recognized constellations, dim Cancer
is the only one whose brightest object is
not a star but a star cluster. Nearly 600
light-years distant, M44 shines with a
total magnitude of 3.1. That's almost
half a magnitude brighter than the constellation's
brightest star, 3.5-magnitude
Beta (β) Cancri.
Cancer is so dim that it's been dismissively
described as " the blank spot
between Gemini and Leo. " In reality,
its main stars and the Beehive can be
seen even in fairly light-polluted skies.
Of course, we have to remember that
an extended object such as M44 spreads
its light over a much greater area of sky
than a single, pinpoint star does. That
means the Beehive is more adversely
affected by bright conditions.
In ancient times, the cluster's nakedeye
visibility was supposed to predict the
coming of stormy weather. If individual
stars in the constellation could be seen,
pCRABTASTIC CLUSTER Naked-eye open cluster M44 lies at the heart of the dim constellation
Cancer, the Crab. Use the star map on pages 42 and 43 to identify the constellation's stars and
M44 in the photo above.
but not the Beehive, poor weather was
expected. This prognostication method
isn't as fanciful as it might first seem.
After all, a shield of cirrus clouds often
precedes a storm system - exactly the
kind of thin cloud cover that tends
to hide extended objects such as M44
before extinguishing individual stars.
Although I've been referring to the
cluster as the Beehive, it wasn't known
by that name in ancient times. Back
then it was called Praesepe, Latin for
manger. This title came about because of
a delightful visualization. The little haze
of stars is just west of and midway along
a 3° north-south line that connects
Gamma (γ) and Delta (δ) Cancri - the
northern and southern donkeys (Asellus
Borealis and Australis, respectively),
who had come to the manger to eat.
Ready for a super observing challenge?
The brightest star in M44 is
6.3-magnitude Epsilon (ε) Cancri, the
star marking the southwest corner of a
lopsided square near the cluster's center.
In fact, roughly a dozen stars in the Beehive
shine at between 6.3 and 6.9. Is it
possible to see any of them individually
without optics? The feat apparently has
been pulled off a few times by observers
with truly extraordinary eyes and skies.
One final, remarkable feature of the
Beehive is its proximity to the ecliptic,
which means solar system objects
regularly appear to pass near (or even
through) it. Indeed, Mars will traverse
the cluster this coming June. But it's
not just the Moon and planets that
visit. Forty years ago I watched the head
of Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock (C/1983
H1) pass just east of the Beehive with
my eyes alone. This was a remarkable
comet that passed very close to Earth -
the closest one in more than 200 years.
To the naked eye, IRAS-Araki-Alcock
was a big, bright patch of radiance
several times larger and two magnitudes
brighter than the Beehive.
¢ FRED SCHAAF enjoys hearing
from readers. He can be e-mailed at
fschaaf54@gmail.com.
sk yand tele scope .o r g * MARCH 2023 45
AKIRA FUJII

Sky & Telescope - March 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - March 2023

Contents
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - Cover1
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - Cover2
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - 1
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - Contents
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - 3
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - 4
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - 5
Sky & Telescope - March 2023 - 6
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