NGC 2627 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

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 ...

Pyxis Pyxis is a small and faint constellation in the southern sky. Abbreviated from Pyxis Nautica, its name is Latin for a mariner's compass (contrasting with Circinus, which represents a draftsman's compasses). Pyxis was introduced by Nicolas-Louis ...

. It was discovered on March 3, 1793 by German-British 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 ...

. Dutch astronomer J. L. E. Dreyer described it as "a cluster, considerably large, pretty rich, pretty compressed, stars from 11th to 13th magnitude". The cluster has an integrated visual magnitude of 8.4 and it spans an

angular size The angular diameter, angular size, apparent diameter, or apparent size is an angular separation (in units of angle) describing how large a sphere or circle appears from a given point of view. In the vision sciences, it is called the '' visua ...

of . Around 15 stars are visible when viewed through binoculars. NGC 2627 is located at a distance of approximately from the Sun, just above the galactic midplane. This cluster has a Trumpler class of III 2m, which means it is generally average in appearance with no noticeable concentration of stars. It is of intermediate age, being around 1.4 billion years old. Correspondingly, the

metallicity In astronomy, metallicity is the Abundance of the chemical elements, abundance of Chemical element, elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. Most of the normal currently detectable (i.e. non-Dark matter, dark) matt ...

of the cluster is slightly sub-solar. The cluster population shows four different peaks of

star formation Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space—sometimes referred to as "stellar nurseries" or "star-forming regions"—Jeans instability, collapse and form stars. As a branch of astronomy, sta ...

, separated by relatively quiescent periods lasting two to three hundred million years.

References

External links

* Open clusters Pyxis 2627 {{Star-cluster-stub