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Star cluster

BDSB 115

Open star cluster · 115 million years

An open cluster of stars born together from the same gas cloud in the Milky Way’s disc; the Galaxy’s tidal forces will disperse it within a few hundred million years. Position, distance, age and member count come from the MWSC catalogue; the total brightness is roughly estimated from the member count.

TypeStar cluster
ConstellationSagittarius
Distance7,959 pc (26.0 thousand ly)
Age115 million years
Member stars (MWSC)26
Reddening E(B−V)1.54
SourceMWSC (Kharchenko et al. 2013)
Right ascension (J2000)18h 14m 04.9s
Declination (J2000)−17° 28′ 12″

In the sky

Visible from the whole Southern Hemisphere and north to latitude 73° N. South of latitude 73° S it never sets. It stands highest at midnight in June, the best time to observe it.

Through a telescope from Earth

Light's journey

The light you see tonight set out 26 thousand years ago. At that time Homo sapiens was spreading out of Africa; there was no farming yet. At the speed of Voyager 1, the fastest craft leaving the Solar System (16.9 km per second), the trip would take 460 million years.

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