RA 130.0925° · Dec 19.6721° · openngc
📷 Real photoComputing the sky for your location…
13 more points to reach Anomaly.
Beehive is an epic cluster. It lies about 607.3 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Cnc and shines at apparent magnitude 3.1.
An open cluster: a few hundred stars born together out of one collapsing cloud, still drifting along in loose formation.
Look for Beehive in the constellation Cnc. At apparent magnitude 3.1, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.
Like any astronomical target, Beehive is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Beehive scores 65 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 13 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 8 science badges — Star cluster, Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Open cluster, On the zodiac, Bigger on the sky than the full Moon and Bright enough for the unaided eye — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.