What is M67 in the sky?
Messier 67 (also known as M67 or NGC 2682) and sometimes called the King Cobra cluster or the Golden Eye cluster is an open cluster in the southern, equatorial half of Cancer. It is not the oldest known open cluster, but clusters known to be older tied to the Milky Way are few, and none of those is closer.
What is the distance to the M67 cluster?
2700 light years
Messier 67 or M67 (also designated NGC 2682) is an open cluster in the constellation Cancer. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 6.1 and its angular diameter is 30 arc-minutes. M67 lies at an estimated distance of 2700 light years.
How old is M67 star cluster?
around 4 billion years old
Astronomy Picture of the Day In fact, though open star clusters are usually much younger, the stars of M67 are likely around 4 billion years old, about the same age and with about the same elemental abundances as the Sun.
Why is M44 called the Beehive Cluster?
The showpiece of the constellation Cancer is M44, the “Praesepe” (“PRAY-see-pay”) star cluster. It’s also called the “Beehive” cluster because it looks like a hive of bees.
Where is Messier 67 located?
constellation Cancer
Messier 67 (M67), nicknamed the King Cobra Cluster, is an open cluster located in the northern constellation Cancer, the Crab. The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 6.1 and lies at an approximate distance of 2,610 to 2,930 light years from Earth.
How old is NGC 188?
age determination 5 billion years old, and NGC 188 in Cepheus is 6.5 billion years of age. The oldest known open cluster, Collinder 261 in the southern constellation of Musca, is 8.9 billion years old.
How old is NGC 752?
about 1.5 billion years
Discovered in 1783 and located some 1,300 light-years away from the Earth, NGC 752 is one of the nearest open clusters to the sun. With an estimated age of about 1.5 billion years, the cluster is old enough to host white dwarfs.
What does the M stand for in M44?
Praesepe, also known as Messier 44 (M44) or the Beehive Cluster, is a large, bright open star cluster located in the constellation Cancer. Messier 44 lies at a distance of about 577 light years from Earth. It is one of the nearest open star clusters to Earth.
Can you see the Beehive Cluster with the naked eye?
The Beehive star cluster is halfway between Regulus and the Castor-and-Pollux pair. But the Beehive star cluster isn’t bright. Only in dark country skies can you see this faint fuzzy object with the unaided eye. However, binoculars magically transform this smudge of light into a glittery swarm of stars.
What type of star is M67?
K-type giant stars
The cluster contains 11 bright orange K-type giant stars and about 200 white dwarfs. With the exception of about 30 blue stragglers, the stars in M67 are all roughly the same age and lie at the same distance. The origins of the blue stragglers have not been explained yet.
What type of stars do globular clusters contain?
Globular clusters are generally composed of hundreds of thousands of low-metal, old stars. The stars found in a globular cluster are similar to those in the bulge of a spiral galaxy but confined to a spheroid in which half the light is emitted within a radius of only a few to a few tens of parsecs.
What type of star is M44?
Beehive Cluster
Messier 44 (M44), also known as the Beehive Cluster or Praesepe (the Manger), is an open star cluster in the constellation Cancer. Praesepe is a bright, large cluster with an apparent magnitude of 3.7. It lies at a distance of 577 light years from Earth.
How old is Messier 67?
Messier 67 is a very old open cluster located in the constellation of Cancer. Estimations of its age vary between 3.2 and 5 billion years, with recent valuations putting it at 4 billion. This makes it one of the oldest known open clusters.
What is Messier 45 also known as?
Messier 45: Pleiades. Messier 45 (M45), also known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters, is a bright open star cluster located in the constellation Taurus, the Bull. The Pleiades cluster has an apparent magnitude of 1.6 and lies at an average distance of 444 light years from Earth. The cluster is also known as Melotte 22.
What kind of stars are in M67?
As a consequence, M67 contains a variety of stellar types including many Sun like stars, red giants and white dwarfs. It’s easily the most ancient Messier open cluster. For comparison, the Praesepe (M44) is 600 million years old and the brilliant Pleiades (M45) a very youthful 100 million years.
What does M67 stand for?
Messier 67 (also known as M67 or NGC 2682) is an open cluster in the southern, equatorial half of Cancer. It was discovered by Johann Gottfried Koehler in 1779.