The Coronet Cluster, also known as the R CrA cluster after its best-known member, is a small

open cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, and ...

located about 170

parsec The parsec (symbol: pc) is a unit of length used to measure the large distances to astronomical objects outside the Solar System, approximately equal to or (au), i.e. . The parsec unit is obtained by the use of parallax and trigonometry, a ...

s away in the southern constellation Corona Australis, isolated at the edge of the

Gould Belt The Gould Belt is a local, partial ring of stars in the Milky Way, about 3,000 light-years long, tilted away from the galactic plane by about 16–20 degrees. It contains many O- and B-type stars, amounting to the nearest star-forming regio ...

. The Coronet Cluster is 3.5 times closer to the Earth than the

Orion Nebula Cluster The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the ni ...

. The cluster center is composed of mostly young stars. The variable

T Coronae Australis T Coronae Australis (T CrA), is a young star in the constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representin ...

is also a member, only one arc minute from R CrA.

References

External links

* Gould Belt Open clusters Corona Australis NGC objects {{star-cluster-stub