© Digitised Sky Survey (DSS); Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II)

The Beehive cluster is well placed

Dominic Ford, Editor
From the Deep Sky feed

Objects: M44
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The Beehive open star cluster (M44, NGC 2632, also known as Praesepe; mag 3.1) will be well placed in the evening sky in coming weeks. On 31 January it will reach its highest point in the sky at around midnight local time, and on subsequent evenings it will culminate four minutes earlier each day.

From San Diego , it is visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 18:15 (PST), 16° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 23:44, 76° above your southern horizon. It will continue to be observable until around 05:16, when it sinks below 16° above your western horizon.

At a declination of 19°40'N, it is easiest to see from the northern hemisphere; it can be seen at latitudes between 89°N and 50°S.

Begin typing the name of a town near to you, and then select the town from the list of options which appear below.

At magnitude 3.1, M44 is tricky to make out with the naked eye except from a dark site, but is visible through a pair of binoculars or small telescope.

The position of M44 is as follows:

Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size
M44 08h40m20s 19°40'N Cancer 3.1 0'00"

The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.

The sky on 31 Jan 2024

The sky on 31 January 2024
Sunrise
06:42
Sunset
17:19
Twilight ends
18:44
Twilight begins
05:17

20-day old moon
Waning Gibbous

61%

20 days old

Planets
Rise Culm. Set
Mercury 05:45 10:46 15:48
Venus 04:48 09:50 14:52
Moon 22:00 03:57 09:46
Mars 05:33 10:34 15:34
Jupiter 10:48 17:25 00:01
Saturn 08:05 13:40 19:14
All times shown in PST.

Source

The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.

Image credit

© Digitised Sky Survey (DSS); Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II)

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San Diego

Latitude:
Longitude:
Timezone:

32.72°N
117.16°W
PST

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