While bees are pollinating springtime flowers on Earth, it's a great time to see the Beehive Cluster (Messier 44) and go hunting for eggs (Messier 1 - Crab Nebula). Both these objects have a long history. The Beehive has been observed since antiquity, though it wasn't until Galileo looked through his telescope that it was recognized as a cluster of stars rather than a single object. The earliest record of the Crab Nebula came in July of 1054 when a bright object appeared near the Sun and was even observed in the daytime through the end of that month. It was observable with the naked eye at night for the next two years. Though considered a bad omen when it was first observed, we now understand it as a supernova remnant and has a beautiful structure that has an overall egg shape. The Beehive is only about 610 light years from Earth though there's about two dozen stars that dominate the image, astronomers have attributed about 200 stars to this open cluster.
Photo Details
April 29, 2024
M44 (Beehive)
AstroTech 65Q on Celestron AVX Mount
SBIG STF-8300C Camera
Skyglow filter
15 subframes at 3 minutes/frame
Total Exposure Time = 45 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop
M1 (Crab Nebula)
Seestar S50
Total Exposure Time = 34 minutes
Image Processing in Photoshop
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