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Trash cluster 13 EP

NGC 1968

RA 81.8421° · Dec -67.4638° · openngc

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Score breakdown

· 2 badges
13 pts · Trash
Trash 15 pts → Common
  • Star cluster +7
  • Loose stellar association +6
Total score 13

2 more points to reach Common.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Loose stellar association · +6

Trivia

What it actually is

  • What it actually is. A stellar association: a sprawling family of hot young stars that shared a birthplace but were never gravitationally bound to each other.

Sense of scale

  • Sense of scale. It is already coming apart. Associations dissolve into the general population of the galaxy within tens of millions of years.

Find it in the sky

  • How to spot it. At magnitude 8.2 it is just past naked-eye reach — ordinary binoculars will pull it in, over in Dorado.
  • 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 December — that's when to go looking.

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
Dor
dso type
*Ass
mag
8.22
name
NGC 1968
size arcmin
5

Nearby objects

About NGC 1968

NGC 1968 is a trash cluster. It sits in the constellation Dor and shines at apparent magnitude 8.22.

A stellar association: a sprawling family of hot young stars that shared a birthplace but were never gravitationally bound to each other.

How to see it

Look for NGC 1968 in the constellation Dor. At apparent magnitude 8.22, it is an easy target for binoculars.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 1968 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 NGC 1968 is a trash cluster

NGC 1968 scores 13 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the trash tier. Another 2 points would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 2 science badges — Star cluster and Loose stellar association — 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.