These
days planet Venus is in the constellation of Cancer and rising early
at 3am. From September 12th to 15th September
Venus will pass very close to open cluster M44, popularly called
Beehive cluster. Under good sky conditions, M44 is visible to naked
eyes but best view is with a pair of binoculars. Take the binoculars
out from 12th to 15th of September and point it to the
brightest morning star, Venus, in wide angle binoculars like 10X50
M44 should be visible right-away left of Venus., in little smaller
field of view binoculars like 15X70 you may have to take Venus to the
right corner of the field to make both Venus and M44 visible in the
same field.
Twilight starts creeping in from 4:45am, the time before twilight should make it an amazing sight.
Beehive
cluster or M44 as its know is an open cluster has a magnitude of 3.7.
The age of the cluster is approximately 700
million years old and its distance is 577 light years. Venus on the
other hand is bright -4.2 magnitude and distance is approximately 140
million kilometers.
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