![]() ![]() Like many star clusters of all kinds, Praesepe has experienced mass segregation. It is also known simply as Jishi (積屍), "cumulative corpses". ![]() It was also known by the somewhat less romantic name of Jishi qi (積屍氣, also transliterated Tseih She Ke), the "Exhalation of Piled-up Corpses". Ancient Chinese skywatchers saw this as a ghost or demon riding in a carriage and likened its appearance to a "cloud of pollen blown from willow catkins". This perceived nebulous object is in the Ghost (Gui Xiu), the 23rd lunar mansion of ancient Chinese astrology. Aratus ( c.260–270 BC) calls the cluster Achlus or "Little Mist" in his poem Phainomena. Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest includes the Beehive Cluster as one of seven "nebulae" (four of which are real ), describing it as "The Nebulous Mass in the Breast (of Cancer)". Hipparchus ( c.130 BC) refers to the cluster as Nephelion ("Little Cloud") in his star catalog. Wilhelm Schur's map of the Beehive Cluster in 1894Īncient Greeks and Romans saw this object as a manger from which two donkeys, the adjacent stars Asellus Borealis and Asellus Australis, are eating these are the donkeys that Dionysos and Silenus rode into battle against the Titans. Regulus, Castor, and Pollux are guide stars. Īt 1.5° across, the cluster easily fits within the field of view of binoculars or low-powered small telescopes. The diameter of the bright inner cluster core is about 7.0 parsecs (23 light years). There are better age estimates of around 600 million years (compared to about 625 million years for the Hyades). Both clusters also contain red giants and white dwarfs, which represent later stages of stellar evolution, along with many main sequence stars.ĭistance to M44 is often cited to be between 160 and 187 parsecs (520–610 light years), but the revised Hipparcos parallaxes (2009) for Praesepe members and the latest infrared color-magnitude diagram favors an analogous distance of 182 pc. It was among the first objects that Galileo studied with hisĪge and proper motion coincide with those of the Hyades, suggesting they may share similar origins. ![]() Classical astronomer Ptolemy described it as a "nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer". Under dark skies, the Beehive Cluster looks like a small nebulous object to the naked eye, and has been known since ancient times. One of the nearest open clusters to Earth, it contains a larger population of stars than other nearby bright open clusters holding around 1,000 stars. The Beehive Cluster (also known as Praesepe (Latin for "manger" or "crib"), M44, NGC 2632, or Cr 189), is an open cluster in the constellation Cancer. Webb observes at infrared wavelengths, providing unique information about cluster stars that will complement Hubble’s incredible views.Map showing the location of M44 in the constellation of Cancer. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will further our understanding of globular clusters by peering into their star-studded interiors. Orbiting some 340 miles (550 km) above Earth, Hubble can study what kind of stars make up globular clusters, how they evolve, and the role of gravity in these dense systems without Earth’s atmosphere posing a problem. The distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere makes it nearly impossible to clearly distinguish stars in the cores of globular clusters with ground-based telescopes. Hubble revolutionized the study of globular clusters. To capture the data in this image, Hubble used two of its cutting-edge astronomical instruments: Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The star-strewn observation highlights the density of stars at the heart of globular clusters, which are stable, tightly bound groups of tens of thousands to millions of stars. ![]()
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