This week is all about tracking down a faint, open star cluster with the unaided eye. You will need a dark sky and some patience, but once successful you will feel like you have found some buried treasure up there.
The star cluster in question is known as the Beehive cluster, or Praesepe, the Latin word for manger. It sits in the faint constellation of Cancer, the crab. Praesepe is an open star cluster, a former stellar nursery whose stars are gradually moving apart to merge with the background of stars in the galaxy.
From a dark sky, well away from street lights, and having waited around 30 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the dark, the Beehive will appear as a faint smudge of light. The chart shows the view on Monday night, looking south-west from London at midnight. Note that it is highly unlikely that you will see the cluster on Monday night because the waxing gibbous moon is about 80% illuminated, but it will allow you to fix this position in your mind, and then return at the weekend to search the darker sky. Observers in the southern hemisphere should look north north-east around mid-evening.
