Celestial Objects
Beehive Cluster
Star Clusters
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The Beehive Cluster, catalogued as Messier 44 and also called Praesepe, is an open star cluster in the constellation Cancer holding a larger population of stars, around 1,000, than other nearby bright open clusters. Under dark skies it appears as a small nebulous patch to the naked eye and has been recognized since antiquity; the astronomer Ptolemy described it as a nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer, and it was among the first objects Galileo examined through a telescope.
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