M44 The Beehive Cluster

M44, the Beehive Cluster in the constellation Cancer. This has been my favorite open star cluster since childhood and reading F. Ziegel's book "Treasures of the Starry Sky." In the spring, as a schoolboy, I loved observing it through my "Tourist-4" spyglass :) The cluster is about 700 million years old, making it relatively young, and is located at a distance of roughly 600 light-years. Interestingly, more than half of the stars in the cluster are orange or red M-class stars, but the attention is drawn to the bright blue giants. In Namibia, the Beehive doesn't rise very high, and it's currently the rainy season there, so I seized a couple of clear nights to photograph it. I recommend viewing the original image on a large monitor right away—the cluster is visible against a backdrop of numerous distant galaxies!