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Epic cluster 51 EP

IC 4756

RA 279.7146° · Dec 5.4622° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
51 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye +14
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Star cluster +7
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) +6
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Big on the sky +5
  • Open cluster +3
Total score 51

27 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Distant (over 1,000 light-years) · +6
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Open cluster · +3
  • Big on the sky · +5
  • Coming towards us · +10
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye · +14

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

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 4.6 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Serpens Cauda.
  • Seen from everywhere. It sits almost on the celestial equator, so it can be seen from essentially anywhere on Earth.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around June — that's when to go looking.

Could we get there?

  • Verdict. Impossible with our current technology — and the next millennium of it.

Getting there

  • Aboard Voyager 1. ≈ 27.4 million years at Voyager 1's speed (17 km/s).

Properties

constellation
Se2
dist ly
1557.3509
dso type
OCl
mag
4.6
name
IC 4756
radial velocity kms
-26
size arcmin
24

About IC 4756

IC 4756 is an epic cluster. It lies about 1,557.4 light-years from Earth, sits in the constellation Se2 and shines at apparent magnitude 4.6.

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 IC 4756 in the constellation Se2. At apparent magnitude 4.6, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, IC 4756 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 IC 4756 is an epic cluster

IC 4756 scores 51 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 27 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star cluster, Distant (over 1,000 light-years), Bright deep-sky object, Open cluster, Big on the sky, Coming towards us and Bright enough for the unaided eye — 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.