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AstroKids › Everything in the sky › The Beehive Cluster (Praesepe)
open star cluster

The Beehive Cluster (Praesepe)

A loose swarm of stars that looks like a beehive.

Also called: M44, Praesepe.

🕒 When can I see it?🚀 Travel there
The Beehive Cluster (Praesepe) — Drawn, not photographed.

What it is

Ancient open cluster of about a thousand stars, known since antiquity as a naked-eye 'cloudy patch'.

Open star cluster: A few hundred young stars, still drifting apart. Every kind of thing there is →

How to find the Beehive Cluster

Look in the constellation Cancer.

Visible mainly from the both half of the world.

Finding it: Sits in the faint gap between Leo and Gemini.

The Planetarium works out where it actually is from your own place and the date — including whether it is above the horizon at all tonight.

Show me the Beehive Cluster in tonight's sky

What you will really see

With your own eyes

A sprinkle of stars; the longer you look, the more you see.

Honest, not glamorous — why the pictures here are drawn.

🔭 See it drawn as it looks through a telescope

Worth knowing about the Beehive Cluster

On the 100-meter-track scale model of the Milky Way, the Beehive Cluster would be a bit more than half a meter from the Sun. Light takes 577 Earth years to get here from the Beehive Cluster, so what you are looking at is the Beehive Cluster as it was 577 Earth years ago.

What it is made of
An open cluster containing roughly a thousand stars.
How we know: Its hot blue stars have already burned out, leaving a cooler, more mixed population -- giving an estimated age of ~600-700 million years.
Its name and its story
Described by Ptolemy nearly 2,000 years ago; ancient Greek/Roman farmers used it ('Praesepe', the Manger) as an informal weather forecasting tool.
The numbers
Distance from us577 light-years

Next to it

The Pleiades (Seven Sisters)open star clusterNaked eyeThe Milky Wayspiral galaxyNaked eyeProxima CentauristarWith effortAlpha Centauri A & Bbinary star systemNaked eyeSiriusstarNaked eyeVegastarNaked eye

Then go outside

Clear tonight? The Planetarium will show you what is worth a look. Then just go out.

🌙 Plan an evening outside🌌 Everything else in the sky