← Back to dex
Epic cluster 71 EP

47 Tuc Cluster

RA 6.0223° · Dec -72.0814° · openngc

Loading sky survey…
🌌 View in 3D star map
Tonight’s visibility

Computing the sky for your location…

Score breakdown

· 7 badges
71 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye +14
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon +12
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Star cluster +7
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
Total score 71

7 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • Globular cluster · +14
  • Bigger on the sky than the full Moon · +12
  • Coming towards us · +10
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye · +14

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. Stand on a planet near its core and the night sky would blaze with thousands of stars brighter than Venus. There would be no true darkness.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 4.1 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Tucana.
  • 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 September — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Globulars glow yellow-orange because they are ancient — around 12 billion years old, with every hot blue star long since burned out.

What's in a name

  • Named. Notable enough to have earned a proper name, not just a catalogue number.

How we came to know it

  • The New General Catalogue. Its NGC number comes from J. L. E. Dreyer's 1888 catalogue, itself built on decades of sky sweeps by William Herschel and his sister Caroline.

Properties

constellation
Tuc
dso type
GCl
mag
4.09
name
47 Tuc Cluster
named
yes
radial velocity kms
-17
size arcmin
31.8

Nearby objects

About 47 Tuc Cluster

47 Tuc Cluster is an epic cluster. It sits in the constellation Tuc and shines at apparent magnitude 4.09.

A globular cluster: hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a ball a few dozen light-years across, orbiting far out in the galaxy's halo.

How to see it

Look for 47 Tuc Cluster in the constellation Tuc. At apparent magnitude 4.09, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, 47 Tuc 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 47 Tuc Cluster is an epic cluster

47 Tuc Cluster scores 71 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 7 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 7 science badges — Star cluster, Bright deep-sky object, Has a proper name, Globular cluster, Bigger on the sky than the full Moon, 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.