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Rare cluster 49 EP

NGC 6402

RA 264.4007° · Dec -3.2459° · openngc

Real photograph of NGC 6402 📷 Real photo
NOIRLAB / NSF / AURA (CC BY 4.0)
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Score breakdown

· 5 badges
49 pts · Rare
Rare 50 pts → Epic
  • Globular cluster +14
  • Messier object +12
  • Coming towards us +10
  • Star cluster +7
  • Bright deep-sky object +6
Total score 49

1 more point to reach Epic.

Badges

  • Star cluster · +7
  • Messier object · +12
  • Bright deep-sky object · +6
  • Globular cluster · +14
  • Coming towards us · +10

Trivia

Hard to believe

  • Messier object. One of the 110 showpieces of the Messier list — catalogued as M14.

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 5.7 you can see it with your own eyes from a dark site, over in Ophiuchus.
  • 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.

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.

How we came to know it

  • Messier's anti-list. Charles Messier was a comet hunter, and he compiled his famous catalogue in the 1770s and 80s purely as a list of fuzzy things that are NOT comets. History remembers the distractions and forgets the comets.

Properties

constellation
Oph
dso type
GCl
mag
5.73
messier
yes
messier number
014
name
NGC 6402
radial velocity kms
-61
size arcmin
9.9

Nearby objects

About NGC 6402

NGC 6402 is a rare cluster. It sits in the constellation Oph and shines at apparent magnitude 5.73.

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 NGC 6402 in the constellation Oph. At apparent magnitude 5.73, it can be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies.

Like any astronomical target, NGC 6402 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 6402 is a rare cluster

NGC 6402 scores 49 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the rare tier. Another 1 point would lift it into a rarer tier.

That score comes from 5 science badges — Star cluster, Messier object, Bright deep-sky object, Globular cluster and Coming towards us — 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.