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Star cluster

NGC 6793

Open star cluster · 501 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
ConstellationVulpecula
Distance724 pc (2.4 thousand ly)
Age501 million years
Member stars (MWSC)133
Reddening E(B−V)0.31
SourceMWSC (Kharchenko et al. 2013)
Right ascension (J2000)19h 23m 17.9s
Declination (J2000)+22° 08′ 24″

In the sky

Visible from the whole Northern Hemisphere and south to latitude 68° S. North of latitude 68° N it never sets. It stands highest at midnight in July, the best time to observe it.

Through a telescope from Earth

Light's journey

The light you see tonight set out around 336 BC. At the speed of Voyager 1, the fastest craft leaving the Solar System (16.9 km per second), the trip would take 42 million years.

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