tet Car Cluster
Star cluster in Carina · 479 light-years
🔭 Explore tet Car Cluster in the 3D map →View tet Car Cluster images →| Type | Star cluster |
|---|---|
| Constellation | Carina |
| Right ascension | 10h 42m 57s |
| Declination | −64° 24′ |
| Object distance | 479 light-years |
| Apparent size | 48′ (arc-minutes) |
| Approx. true diameter | 6.7 light-years across |
| Also known as | C102 · IC 2602 |
Caldwell 102, popularly known as the tet Car Cluster, is a star cluster (IC 2602) in Carina — a family of stars bound by gravity. It appears as number 102 in the Caldwell catalogue, Sir Patrick Moore's 1995 list of 109 bright deep-sky objects for amateur astronomers. It spans roughly 48 arc-minutes on the sky. It is one of the showpiece objects Sir Patrick Moore chose for his Caldwell list of bright targets the Messier catalogue left out.
Although it appears about 48′ wide on the sky, its real span is roughly 6.7 light-years — the difference is a measure of how far away it lies.
Observing tet Car Cluster
tet Car Cluster lies in the constellation Carina and is best placed in the evening sky around March. Its maximum altitude above the horizon depends on your latitude. It sits far enough south to be circumpolar from mid-southern latitudes, and never rises for most of the northern hemisphere.
See tet Car Cluster in Universe Finder
Open the interactive 3D map to fly to tet Car Cluster and see it in context among the real stars around it. Launch the 3D view →
Sources
- Position, magnitude and angular size from the OpenNGC catalogue (Mattia Verga).
- Object identity cross-referenced with SIMBAD (CDS, Strasbourg).
- Image credits and the original observation source are linked with each photograph.
Related objects
- Pleiades — star cluster
- Hercules Cluster — star cluster
- Small Sgr Star Cloud — star cluster
- Messier 25 — star cluster
- Messier 103 — star cluster