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47 Tucanae
Sign in to saveAlso known as New General Catalogue 104, 47 Tuc
globular cluster in the constellation Tucana
Key facts
- Class
- III
- Constellation
- Tucana
- Right ascension
- 00 24 05.539
- Declination
- −72 ° 04 ′ 53.20 ″
- Distance
- 4.45 ± 0.01 kpc (14,500 ± 32.6 ly )
- Apparent magnitude v
- +4.09
- Apparent dimensions v
- 43.8 ′
- Mass
- 7.00 × 10 M ☉
- Radius
- 60 ly
- Metallicity
- [ Fe/H ] = −0.78 dex
- Estimated age
- 13.06 Gyr
- Notable features
- 2nd brightest globular cluster after Omega Centauri
- Other designations
- ξ Tuc , NGC 104, Caldwell 106, Mel 1, GCl 1, 1RXS J002404.6-720456
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Part of
- Milky Way
- Follows
- NGC 103
- Constellation
- Tucana
- Distance from Earth
- 4.69
- Radius
- 120
- Image
- The Globular Cluster 47 Tu.jpg
Show 13 more facts
- catalog code
- HIP 1902
- Commons category
- 47 Tuc
- discoverer or inventor
- Nicolas Louis de Lacaille
- time of discovery or invention
- 1751-01-01
- radial velocity
- -17.21
- metallicity
- -0.77
- apparent magnitude
- 3.677
- right ascension
- 6.0223292
- declination
- -72.0814444
- epoch
- J2000.0
- right ascension component of proper motion
- 5.252
- declination component of proper motion
- -2.551
- parallax
- 0.1951
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
47 Tucanae or 47 Tuc (also designated as NGC 104 and Caldwell 106) is a globular cluster located in the constellation Tucana. It is about 4.45 ± 0.01 kpc (14,500 ± 32.6 ly) from Earth, and 120 light years in diameter. 47 Tuc can be seen with the naked eye, with an apparent magnitude of 4.1. It appears about 44 arcminutes across including its far outreaches. Due to its far southern location, 18° from the south celestial pole, it was not catalogued by European astronomers until the 1750s, when the cluster was first identified by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille from South Africa.
47 Tucanae is the second brightest globular cluster after Omega Centauri, and telescopically reveals about ten thousand stars, many appearing within a small dense central core. The cluster may contain an intermediate-mass black hole.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “47 Tucanae” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.