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Star cluster

FSR 1454

Open star cluster · 794 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
ConstellationVela
Distance2,187 pc (7.1 thousand ly)
Age794 million years
Member stars (MWSC)56
Reddening E(B−V)0.63
SourceMWSC (Kharchenko et al. 2013)
Right ascension (J2000)8h 51m 07.2s
Declination (J2000)−48° 28′ 37″

In the sky

Visible from the whole Southern Hemisphere and north to latitude 42° N. South of latitude 42° S it never sets. It stands highest at midnight in January, the best time to observe it.

Through a telescope from Earth

Light's journey

The light you see tonight set out 7,133 years ago. At that time the first farming villages were being founded; there was no writing yet. At the speed of Voyager 1, the fastest craft leaving the Solar System (16.9 km per second), the trip would take 127 million years.

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