Messier 38 or M38, also known as NGC 1912 or Starfish Cluster,Carter, J. (2015). March: The Plane Truth. In ''A Stargazing Program for Beginners'' (pp. 57-85). Springer, Cham. is an

open cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of tens 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 ...

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

s 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 representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

Auriga Auriga is a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. Its name is Latin for '(the) charioteer', associating i ...

. It was discovered by

Giovanni Batista Hodierna Giovanni Battista Hodierna, also spelled as Odierna (April 13, 1597 – April 6, 1660) was an Italian astronomer at the court of Giulio Tomasi, Duke of Palma (Palma di Montechiaro). He compiled a catalogue of comets and other celestial object ...

before 1654 and independently found by

Guillaume Le Gentil Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisière (, 11 or 12 September 1725 – 22 October 1792) was a French astronomer who discovered several nebulae and was appointed to the Royal Academy of Sciences. He wrote on the est ...

in 1749. The open clusters M36 and M37, also discovered by Hodierna, are often grouped together with M38. Distance is about away from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. The open cluster NGC 1907 lies nearby on the sky, but the two are most likely just experiencing a fly-by, having originated in different parts of the galaxy. The cluster's brightest

s form a pattern resembling the Greek letter Pi or, according to Webb, an "oblique cross".

Walter Scott Houston Walter Scott Houston (May 30, 1912–December 23, 1993) was an American popularizer of amateur astronomy. He wrote the " Deep-Sky Wonders" column in ''Sky and Telescope'' magazine from 1946 to 1993. Biography Houston was born in Tippecanoe, ...

described its appearance as follows:

Photographs usually show a departure from circularity, a feature quite evident to visual observers. Older reports almost always mention a cross shape, which seems more pronounced with small instruments. A view with a 24-inch reflector on a fine Arizona night showed the cluster as irregular, and the host of stars made fruitless any effort to find a geometrical figure.

At its distance of 1066 pc., its angular diameter of about 20 arc minutes corresponds to about 4.0 parsecs (13 light years), similar to that of its more distant neighbor M37. It is of intermediate age at about 290 million years. From the population of about 100 stars, this open cluster features a prominent yellow giant with the

apparent magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the Irradiance, brightness of a star, astronomical object or other celestial objects like artificial satellites. Its value depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance, and any extinction (astronomy), ...

+7.9 and

spectral type In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the ...

G0 as its brightest member. This corresponds to an absolute magnitude of -1.5, or a luminosity of 900 Suns. For comparison, the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

would appear as a faint magnitude +15.3 star from the distance of M38.

Components

References

External links

Messier 38, SEDS Messier pages
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Messier 038 Open clusters

038 38 may refer to: *38 (number) *38 BC *AD 38 *1938 *2038 Science * Strontium, an alkaline earth metal in the periodic table * 38 Leda, an asteroid in the asteroid belt Other uses *.38, a caliber of firearms and cartridges ** .38 Special, a re ...

NGC objects Auriga Perseus Arm ?

Components

See also

References

External links