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Star cluster

FSR 0323

Open star cluster · 891 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
ConstellationCygnus
Distance6,699 pc (21.8 thousand ly)
Age891 million years
Member stars (MWSC)53
Reddening E(B−V)0.60
SourceMWSC (Kharchenko et al. 2013)
Right ascension (J2000)21h 43m 15.6s
Declination (J2000)+52° 31′ 30″

In the sky

Visible from the whole Northern Hemisphere and south to latitude 37° S. North of latitude 37° N it never sets. It stands highest at midnight in August, the best time to observe it.

Through a telescope from Earth

Light's journey

The light you see tonight set out 22 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 388 million years.

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