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Star cluster

FSR 0010

Open star cluster · 1.4 billion 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
ConstellationOphiuchus
Distance4,844 pc (15.8 thousand ly)
Age1.4 billion years
Member stars (MWSC)30
Reddening E(B−V)0.54
SourceMWSC (Kharchenko et al. 2013)
Right ascension (J2000)16h 40m 51.6s
Declination (J2000)−16° 01′ 48″

In the sky

Visible from the whole Southern Hemisphere and north to latitude 74° N. South of latitude 74° S it never sets. It stands highest at midnight in May, the best time to observe it.

Through a telescope from Earth

Light's journey

The light you see tonight set out 16 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 280 million years.

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