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An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of tens to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, and many more are thought to exist. Each one is loosely bound by mutual gravitational attraction and becomes disrupted by close encounters with other clusters and clouds of gas as they orbit the Galactic Center. This can result in a loss of cluster members through internal close encounters and a dispersion into the main body of the galaxy. Open clusters generally survive for a few hundred million years, with the most massive ones surviving for a few billion years. In contrast, the more massive globular clusters of stars exert a stronger gravitational attraction on their members, and can survive for longer. Open clusters have been found only in spiral and irregular galaxies, in which active star formation is occurring.
The parsec is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to 3.26 light-years or 206,265 astronomical units (AU), i.e. 30.9 trillion kilometres. The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, and is defined as the distance at which 1 AU subtends an angle of one arcsecond. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 1.3 parsecs from the Sun: from that distance, the gap between the Earth and the Sun spans slightly less than 1/3600 of one degree of view. Most stars visible to the naked eye are within a few hundred parsecs of the Sun, with the most distant at a few thousand parsecs, and the Andromeda Galaxy at over 700,000 parsecs.
Star clusters are large groups of stars held together by self-gravitation. Two main types of star clusters can be distinguished. Globular clusters are tight groups of ten thousand to millions of old stars which are gravitationally bound. Open clusters are more loosely clustered groups of stars, generally containing fewer than a few hundred members, that are often very young. As they move through the galaxy, over time, open clusters become disrupted by the gravitational influence of giant molecular clouds. Even though they are no longer gravitationally bound, they will continue to move in broadly the same direction through space and are then known as stellar associations, sometimes referred to as moving groups.
Vela is a constellation in the southern sky, which contains the Vela Supercluster. Its name is Latin for the sails of a ship, and it was originally part of a larger constellation, the ship Argo Navis, which was later divided into three parts, the others being Carina and Puppis. With an apparent magnitude of 1.8, its brightest star is the hot blue multiple star Gamma Velorum, one component of which is the closest and brightest Wolf-Rayet star in the sky. Delta and Kappa Velorum, together with Epsilon and Iota Carinae, form the asterism known as the False Cross. 1.95-magnitude Delta is actually a triple or quintuple star system.
The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is an asterism of an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Taurus. At a distance of about 444 light-years, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and the nearest Messier object to Earth, being the most obvious star cluster to the naked eye in the night sky. It is also observed to house the reflection nebula NGC 1432, an HII region.
Hipparcos was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial objects on the sky. This permitted the first high-precision measurements of the intrinsic brightnesses, proper motions, and parallaxes of stars, enabling better calculations of their distance and tangential velocity. When combined with radial velocity measurements from spectroscopy, astrophysicists were able to finally measure all six quantities needed to determine the motion of stars. The resulting Hipparcos Catalogue, a high-precision catalogue of more than 118,200 stars, was published in 1997. The lower-precision Tycho Catalogue of more than a million stars was published at the same time, while the enhanced Tycho-2 Catalogue of 2.5 million stars was published in 2000. Hipparcos' follow-up mission, Gaia, was launched in 2013.
Maia, designated 20 Tauri, is a star in the constellation of Taurus. It is a blue giant of spectral type B8 III, a chemically peculiar star, and the prototype of the Maia variable class of variable star.
Iota Orionis is a multiple star system in the equatorial constellation of Orion the hunter. It is the eighth-brightest member of Orion with an apparent visual magnitude of 2.77 and also the brightest member of the asterism known as Orion's Sword. It is a member of the NGC 1980 open cluster. From parallax measurements, it is located at a distance of roughly 1,340 light-years from the Sun.
Brocchi's Cluster is a asterism of 10 stars. Six of the stars appear in an row, across 1.3° of the night sky. The cluster is in the south of the constellation Vulpecula, near the constellation Sagitta. Its nickname is the Coathanger. None of these ten stars are believed to be gravitationally bound to each other, thus they are not a star cluster, a fact established by measurements taken by the Hipparcos satellite in 1997. An additional 30 or so much fainter stars are considered by some to be part of the asterism.
V533 Carinae is a A-type supergiant and a Alpha Cygni variable star with a mean apparent magnitude of +4.59 in the constellation Carina. It is located at a distance of about 13,000 light years.
The Alpha Persei Cluster, also known as Melotte 20 or Collinder 39, is an open cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Perseus. To the naked eye, the cluster consists of several blue-hued spectral type B stars. The most luminous member is the ~2nd magnitude yellow supergiant Mirfak, also known as Alpha Persei. Bright members also include Delta, Sigma, Psi, 29, 30, 34, and 48 Persei. The Hipparcos satellite and infrared color-magnitude diagram fitting have been used to establish a distance to the cluster of ~560 light-years (172 pc). The distance established via the independent analyses agree, thereby making the cluster an important rung on the cosmic distance ladder. As seen from the Earth, the extinction of the cluster due to interstellar dust is around 0.30.
The Collinder catalogue is a catalogue of 471 open clusters compiled by Swedish astronomer Per Collinder. It was published in 1931 as an appendix to Collinder's paper On structural properties of open galactic clusters and their spatial distribution.
HD 74180 is a single star in the constellation Vela. It is a yellow-white F-type supergiant with a mean apparent magnitude of +3.81 and a spectral classification F8Ib. Estimates of its distance to Earth vary between 3,200 and 8,300 light-years.
NGC 6025 is an open cluster of stars in the southern constellation of Triangulum Australe, near the northern constellation border with Norma. It was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751 during his expedition to the Cape of Good Hope. The cluster is in the Caldwell catalogue as entry number 95, and is located at a mean distance of 2,410 ly from the Sun. NGC 6025 can be spotted with the naked eye, but is better viewed with a set of large binoculars. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 5.1 and spans an angular size of 15′.
S Monocerotis, also known as 15 Monocerotis, is a massive multiple and variable star system located in the constellation Monoceros. It is the brightest star in the Christmas Tree open cluster in the area catalogued as NGC 2264.
7 Sagittarii is a massive star in the southern zodiac constellation of Sagittarius which is located in the Lagoon Nebula, although multiple sources have considered it a foreground star. It is a dim star but visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of 5.37. The distance to this star can be determined from the annual parallax shift of 3.02±0.28 mas, yielding a value of roughly 1,100 light years. It is moving closer to the Sun with a heliocentric radial velocity of −11 km/s.
WR 24 is a Wolf-Rayet star in the constellation Carina. It is one of the most luminous stars known. At the edge of naked eye visibility it is also one of the brightest Wolf Rayet stars in the sky.
χ Puppis, Latinised as Chi Puppis, is a single star in the southern constellation of Puppis. It has a white hue and is faintly visible to the eye at night with an apparent visual magnitude of 4.79. The star is located at a distance of approximately 1,800 light years from the Sun based on parallax, and is drifting further away with a radial velocity of +30 km/s. O. J. Eggen listed this star as a member of the Hyades Stream based on its space motion.
V520 Persei is a blue supergiant member of NGC 869, one of the Perseus Double Cluster open clusters. It is an irregular variable star. At a magnitude of 6.55, V520 Persei is the brightest member in either NGC 869 or NGC 884, although the brighter HD 13994 lies in the foreground along the same line of sight.
References
- 1 2 3 The Astronomical Almanac, Nautical Almanac Office, Great Britain: United States Naval Observatory, p. H68
- 1 2 van Leeuwen, F. (April 2009), "Parallaxes and proper motions for 20 open clusters as based on the new Hipparcos catalogue", Astronomy and Astrophysics, 497 (1): 209–242, arXiv: 0902.1039 , Bibcode:2009A&A...497..209V, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/200811382
- ↑ "C 0722-321 – Cluster of Stars", SIMBAD, Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg , retrieved 2010-12-23
- 1 2 3 Fitzgerald, M. P.; Miller, M.; Harris, G. L. H. (April 1980), "A spectroscopic and statistical study of Collinder 140", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , 191: 95–114, Bibcode:1980MNRAS.191...95F, doi: 10.1093/mnras/191.1.95
- ↑ Plotner, Tammy (2007), What's Up 2007: 365 Days of Skywatching, Lulu.com, p. 87, ISBN 0-9782214-0-0
- ↑ Subramaniam, A.; Bhatt, H. C. (December 1999), "Star Formation History of the Puppis-Vela Region Using HIPPARCOS Data", in Nakamoto, T. (ed.), Star Formation 1999, Proceedings of Star Formation 1999, pp. 373–374, Bibcode:1999sf99.proc..373S