Messier 44, known as M44, The Beehive Cluster, or The Praesepe is an open star cluster in the constellation of Cancer. It is the 44th entry in the list that comet hunter Charles Messier compiled of objects that are not comets. Open star clusters are a group of stars that were born together and are now spreading out through space. M44 is about 577 light-years from us making it one of the closest star clusters. I took this photograph with my home-made telescope from my backyard that has significant light pollution (Bortle 8-9).
Photographer: Rick Scott
Date / time: March 22, 2019 at 7:56 - 11:08 PM MST
Telescope: home-made 10" f/4.6 Lurie-Houghton
Mount: Losmandy HGM Titan with Gemini 2
Guiding: Lumicon Easy Guider, ZWO ASI120MM Mini, PHD2
Camera: Canon EOS 60Da digital camera
Filter: Optolong L-Pro
Exposures: 31 x 300 sec (2.58 hours), f/4.6, ISO 400 in raw mode
41 flats, 80 bias, or no dark frames
JaZ 2 Observatory
Software: DeepSkyStacker (DSS) for alignment, stacking, and RAW conversion; Adobe Photoshop CS6 for image processing
Updated: May 5, 2019