Open Cluster NGC 2175 (also known as OCL 476 or Cr 84) 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 ...

in the

Orion constellation Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter 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. It is named after a hun ...

, embedded in a diffusion nebula. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and independently discovered by Karl Christian Bruhns in 1857. NGC 2175 is at a distance of about 6,350

light year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distance, astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by t ...

s 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 nebula surrounding it is

Sharpless catalog The Sharpless catalog is a list of 313 H II regions (emission nebulae) intended to be comprehensive north of declination −27°. (It does include some nebulae south of that declination as well.) The first edition was published in 1953 with 1 ...

Sh 2-252, and it is sometimes called the Monkey Head Nebula due to its appearance. There is some equivocation in the use of the identifiers NGC 2174 and NGC 2175. These may apply to the entire nebula, to its brightest knot, or to the star cluster it includes. Burnham's ''Celestial Handbook'' lists the entire nebula as 2174/2175 and does not mention the star cluster. The NGC Project (working from the original descriptive notes) assigns NGC 2174 to the prominent knot at J2000 , and NGC 2175 to the entire nebula, and by extension to the star cluster. Simbad uses NGC 2174 for the nebula and NGC 2175 for the star cluster. NGC2175 CDK Small 03

References

External links

NGC 2175 @ SEDS NGC objects pages
* 2175 Open clusters Orion (constellation) {{star-cluster-stub