Key facts
- Right ascension
- 01 02 10.1
- Declination
- −71 ° 36 ′ 17 ″
- Apparent dimensions v
- 2.6′ × 2.6′
- Mass
- 2.15 × 10 M ☉
- Estimated age
- 8.10 ± 1.20 Gyr
- Other designations
- ESO 051-SC 012.
- Constellation
- Tucana
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- galaxy
- Part of
- Small Magellanic Cloud
- Constellation
- Tucana
- Image
- NGC361-hst-R555GB450.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- discoverer or inventor
- James Dunlop
- Commons category
- NGC 361
- catalog code
- ESO 51-12
- time of discovery or invention
- 1826-09-06
- apparent magnitude
- 10.70
- right ascension
- 15.553458
- declination
- -71.604500
- epoch
- J2000.0
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 361 is an open cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. It is located in the constellation Tucana. It was discovered on September 6, 1826, by James Dunlop. It was described by Dreyer as "very very faint, pretty large, very little extended, very gradually brighter middle." At an aperture of 31.0 arcseconds, its apparent V-band magnitude is 12.24, but at this wavelength, it has 0.40 magnitudes of interstellar extinction.
NGC 361 is about 8.1 billion years old. Its estimated mass is 2.15×10 M☉, and its total luminosity is 1.04×10 L☉, leading to a mass-to-luminosity ratio of 2.07 M☉/L☉. All else equal, older star clusters have higher mass-to-luminosity ratios; that is, they have lower luminosities for the same mass.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “NGC 361” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.