[AZ-Observing] Re: Why Is M44 The Beehive?
- From: "Gene A. Lucas" <geneluca@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:49:46 -0700
Jones (Kenneth Glyn, not Jack) writes in "Messier's Nebulae and Star Clusters"
(1968 and 1991): "Early in May 1764 he [Messier] evidently decided that it was
worth making a list of as many of these objects as he could find; not for any
great
interest in the objects themselves, but only to facilitate his comet observing
...
Messier seems to have let the affair rest for a while for it was not until 1769
that
he decided to prepare his list for publication. .... At the last moment,
before
submitting his manuscript, he possibly decided that the total of 41 objects
seemed
too untidy and on the night of March 4th, 1769, he observed and described four
more
objects to bring the number up to 45. These additions all have the appearance
of
'make-weights': Nos. 42 and 43 comprise the well-known Orion Nebula while Nos.
44
and 45 -- the Praesepe and Pleiades clusters -- were hardly to be mistaken for
comets. However, they make the list look more impressive."
K.G. Jones has much more on M44, of course, but sheds no further light on the
name,
"Beehive" except in passing.
Olcott's Field Book of the Skies (rev. by the Mayalls, 1954) states,
"The feature of this constellation [Cancer] is the coarse cluster known as
Praesepe
.... The word means Manger. .... As with the unaided eye, the outstanding
telescopic
feature of Cancer is the "Bee Hive." The Bee Hive contains a total of 358 stars
down to the 18th magnitude. Eight stars in the cluster are brighter than the
10th
magnitude, and there are 100 stars which are brighter than the Sun; of these,
20 are
10 times the Sun's brightness. The cluster is 300 light years distant." [and
more
about the motion of the stars and the relative size of the cluster, etc.]
Gene Lucas
(17250)
"Stanley A. Gorodenski" wrote:
> >From Star Names their Lore and Meaning is the following:
> "With us is the well-known BeeHive, but its history as such I have not been
> able
> to learn, although it undoubtedly is a recent designation, for nowhere is it
> Apiarium."
> The next paragraph follows which I am guessing still refers to the BeeHive:
> "Scientifically it was the [greek word is here], or little cloud, of
> Hipparchos;
> the [greek word], or Little Mist, of Aratos; the [greek word], Cloudy One,
> [greek word], Whirling Cloud, and Nubilum, literally a Cloudy Sky, of Bayer;
> but
> the Almagests and astronomers generally of the 16th and 17th centuries
> referred
> to it as the Nebula, and Nebulosa, in pectore Cancri, for before the invention
> of the telescope this was the only universally recognized nebula, its
> components
> not being separately distiguishable by ordinary vision. But it seems to have
> been strangely regarded as three nebulous objects. Galileo, of course, was the
> first to resolve it, and wrote in the Nuncius Sidereus: The nebula called
> Praesepe, which is not one star, only, but a mas of more than forty small
> stars."
>
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