the beehive cluster

"This holiday season is about remembering that the greatest gift was not laid under a tree, but in a filthy manger." -Unknown But it isn't the manger you're thinking of that I want to share with you this Messier Monday. Although Charles Messier's catalogue of 110 deep sky objects -- designed to pinpoint nebulae that could possibly be confused for potential comets -- is composed mostly of objects only visible through a telescope, a few of them are visible under good seeing conditions to the naked eye, and have been known since ancient times. Image credit: Finotto Enrico, 2011 / flickr user…