WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Astro Minute: The Beehive Cluster

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

The vernal equinox brings spring ... and the beautiful Beehive Cluster! Learn how to find it on today's episode of Astro Minute!

Welcome to the Astro Minute, where we're exploring the universe 60 seconds out of time. I'm Lauren Smith, and today we're looking for the Beehive Cluster. The Vernal Equinox falls on March 20th this year, signaling Spring's arrival in the Northern Hemisphere. With spring comes M44, the Beehive Cluster. The Beehive is an open cluster, a gravitationally bound group of stars, which formed around the same time from the same molecular cloud. The ancients admired this faint fuzzy patch, but it wasn't until the sky. the 1600s that Galileo's telescope revealed some of its individual stars to humanity. To find the Beehive Cluster, first find Regulus, the bright point of Leo's question mark,

and Pollux, the more eastern of the twin stars in Gemini. The Beehive Cluster is the faint smear of light about halfway between them. Follow Galileo's lead and use binoculars to resolve some of the hundreds of stars in the group. That's your Astro Minute.