Key facts
- Right ascension
- 01 03 50.21
- Declination
- −72 ° 49 ′ 33.5 ″
- Mass
- 3,400 ± 400 M ☉
- Estimated age
- 28 ± 7 Myr
- Other designations
- ESO 029-SC 029.
- Constellation
- Tucana
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- open cluster
- Part of
- Small Magellanic Cloud
- Constellation
- Tucana
- Image
- NGC376 - HST - Potw2249a.jpg
Show 8 more facts
- time of discovery or invention
- 1826-09-02
- Commons category
- NGC 376
- catalog code
- OGLE-CL SMC 139
- discoverer or inventor
- James Dunlop
- apparent magnitude
- 10.17
- right ascension
- 15.959208
- declination
- -72.825972
- epoch
- J2000.0
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 376 is a young open cluster of stars in the southern constellation of Tucana. It was discovered on September 2, 1826, by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop. Dreyer, a Danish/British astronomer, described it as a "globular cluster, bright, small, round." It is irregular in form, with a central spike.
The cluster is located in the eastern extension of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a nearby dwarf galaxy. It may have already lost 90% of its original mass and is in the process of dissolving into the SMC. As a result, it has achieved a relatively low concentration of stars and is no longer in dynamic equilibrium. The cluster is about 28 million years old and contains ~3,400 times the mass of the Sun. It has a core radius of 7.6 ± 0.3 ly and a tidal radius of 19.2 ± 0.7 ly.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q1036326” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.