The Beehive Cluster

The vernal equinox brings spring ... and the beautiful Beehive Cluster! Learn how to find it on today's episode of Astro Minute.

What is Astro Minute?

Welcome to the Astro Minute! I'm Lauren Smyth, and with the help of astronomer and teacher Kelli Smyth, I'll be your tour guide as we explore the secrets of the night sky sixty seconds at a time.

Welcome to the Astro minute, where we’re exploring the universe sixty seconds at a time. I’m Lauren Smyth, and today we are looking for the Beehive Cluster.

The vernal equinox falls on March twentieth this year, signaling spring’s arrival in the Northern Hemisphere. With spring comes M44, the Beehive Cluster. The Beehive is an “open cluster,” a gravitationally bound group of stars which formed around the same time from the same molecular cloud. The ancients admired this faint fuzzy patch, but it wasn’t until the sixteen hundreds that Galileo’s telescope revealed some of its individual stars to humanity.

To find the Beehive Cluster, find Regulus, the bright point of Leo’s question mark, and Pollux, the more eastern of the twin stars in Gemini. The Beehive Cluster is the faint smear of light about halfway between them. Follow Galileo’s lead, and use binoculars to resolve some of the hundreds of stars in the group.

That’s your AstroMinute!

Visibility: March-May