Stargazing News - May 16th, 2025
From
CJ@21:2/156 to
All on Thu May 15 06:14:55 2025
Friday May 16, 2025
Berenice's Hair (all night)
The constellation of Coma Berenices, or Berenice's Hair, is composed of three medium- bright stars arranged as a right-angle triangle. In evening during mid-May, those stars are located high in the southern sky, about 30 degrees to the south of the Big Dipper and 18 degrees to the northeast of Leo's bright tail star Denebola. Beta Comae Berenices, the highest of the three stars, is slightly brighter than the other two stars. Diadem shines to its south. The star Gamma Comae Berenices (or ? Com or Al Dafirah) to Beta's west is close to the limit of visibility in light polluted skies, but is easy to see in rural locations. The Coma Star Cluster is a collection of 4th and 5th magnitude
stars sprinkled to the southwest of Gamma. The cluster, which covers 7 degrees of sky, is approximately 290 light-years distant. It is best viewed using binoculars. Meant to represent the hair of Berenice, other names for the cluster are Ariadne's Hair, Thisbe's Veil, the Cobweb Cluster, the Flying Witch, Black Bart's Hair, and Melotte 111. In antiquity, those stars represented the tuft at the end of Leo's tail.
(Data courtesy of Starry Night)
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