NGC 2281, also known as the Broken Heart Cluster,
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 ...
of stars in the northern
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 ...
of
Auriga. It was discovered by English astronomer
William Herschel
Frederick William Herschel ( ; ; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel. Born in the Electorate of Hanover ...
on March 4, 1788, and described as a, "cluster of coarsely scattered pretty
right
Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...
stars, pretty rich".
[ The Trumpler class for NGC 2281 is I3p, indicating a poor (p) but compact (I) grouping with a wide range of brightness (3).][ It is located at a distance of approximately from 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 ...
and is 630–661 million years old.[
]
References
External links
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Image NGC 2281
NGC 2281
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NGC 2281
2281
Open clusters
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