NGC 330
Sign in to saveyoung open cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Key facts
- Right ascension
- 00 56 17.6
- Declination
- −72 ° 27 ′ 47 ″
- Apparent dimensions v
- 2.8′ × 2.5′
- Mass
- 5.4 × 10 M ☉
- Estimated age
- 0.09 ± 0.05 Gyr
- Other designations
- ESO 029-SC 024.
- Constellation
- Tucana
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- open cluster
- Part of
- Small Magellanic Cloud
- Constellation
- Tucana
- Image
- NGC330 - HST - Potw2126a.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- catalog code
- ESO 29-24
- Commons category
- NGC 330
- discoverer or inventor
- James Dunlop
- time of discovery or invention
- 1826-08-01
- apparent magnitude
- 8.89
- right ascension
- 14.085792
- declination
- -72.453472
- epoch
- J2000.0
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 330 is an open cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. It is located in the constellation Tucana. It was discovered on 1 August 1826 by James Dunlop. It was described by Dreyer as "a globular cluster, very bright, small, a little extended, stars from 13th to 15th magnitude." At an aperture of 31.0 arcseconds, the apparent V-band magnitude is 9.60, but at this wavelength, it also has 0.36 magnitudes of interstellar extinction.
NGC 330 is quite young, at about 40 million years old, and has a large proportion of Be stars. Its estimated mass is 5.4×10 M☉, and its total luminosity is 8.93×10 L☉, leading to a mass-to-luminosity ratio of 0.06 M☉/L☉. All else equal, older star clusters have higher mass-to-luminosity ratios; that is, they have lower luminosities for the same mass. About 34% of the massive star population in NGC 330 is estimated to be in a close binary star system; this is lower than clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way, but it is unknown if this is because NGC 330 is metal-poor or is older than the compared clusters.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “NGC 330” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.