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Epic cluster 53 EP

chi Persei Cluster

RA 35.6337° · Dec 57.1441° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 7 badges
53 pts · Epic
Epic 78 pts → Anomaly
  • Bright enough for the unaided eye +14
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Has a proper name +8
  • Star cluster +7
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
  • Big on the sky +5
  • Open cluster +3
Total score 53

25 more points to reach Anomaly.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Has a proper name · +8
  • 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

  • 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 3.8 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Perseus.
  • Northern sky. It rides the northern half of the sky — an easier target the further north you are.
  • Best time of year. It stands highest in the middle of the night around October — that's when to go looking.

Its true colour

  • Its true colour. Open clusters look blue-white because they are young — their hottest, bluest stars have not had time to die yet.

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
Per
dso type
OCl
mag
3.8
name
chi Persei Cluster
named
yes
radial velocity kms
-45
size arcmin
10.5

Nearby objects

About chi Persei Cluster

chi Persei Cluster is an epic cluster. It sits in the constellation Per and shines at apparent magnitude 3.8.

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 chi Persei Cluster in the constellation Per. At apparent magnitude 3.8, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, chi Persei 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 chi Persei Cluster is an epic cluster

chi Persei Cluster scores 53 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the epic tier. Another 25 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, 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.