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Uncommon cluster 30 EP

tet Car Cluster

RA 160.7395° · Dec -64.3942° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 4 badges
30 pts · Uncommon
Uncommon 34 pts → Rare
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon +12
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Star cluster +7
  • Open cluster +3
Total score 30

4 more points to reach Rare.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Open cluster · +3
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon · +12

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. An open cluster: a few hundred stars born together out of one collapsing cloud, still drifting along in loose formation.

Sense of scale

  • In perspective. Far away by human standards, yet still a local address inside the Milky Way's spiral arms.
  • Sense of scale. Gravity is not strong enough to hold it. Within a few hundred million years these siblings will be scattered right around the galaxy.

Find it in the sky

  • Where to look. You'll find it in the constellation Carina.
  • Southern sky only. So far south it never rises for most of the northern hemisphere. To see it you'd have to travel to Chile, South Africa or Australia.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around March — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Hopelessly far for any craft humanity can build today.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 8.7 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Car
dist ly
496.3567
dso type
OCl
name
tet Car Cluster
named
yes
radial velocity kms
17
redshift
0.0001
size arcmin
48

About tet Car Cluster

tet Car Cluster is an uncommon cluster. It lies about 496.4 light-years from Earth and sits in the constellation Car.

An open cluster: a few hundred stars born together out of one collapsing cloud, still drifting along in loose formation.

How to see it

Look for tet Car Cluster in the constellation Car.

Like any astronomical target, tet Car Cluster is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.

Why tet Car Cluster is an uncommon cluster

tet Car Cluster scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 4 science badges — Star cluster, Has a proper name, Open cluster and Bigger on the sky than the full Moon — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.