NGC 3114 is a sparse

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 ...

which is projected onto the outskirts of the

Carina Carina may refer to: Places Australia * Carina, Queensland, a suburb in Brisbane * Carina Heights, Queensland, a suburb in Brisbane * Carina, Victoria, a locality in Mildura Serbia * Carina, Osečina, a village in the Kolubara District ...

complex.G. Carraro, F. Patat, "Star clusters in the Carina complex: UBVRI photometry of NGC 3114, Colliner 228 and vdB-Hage 99*, A&A, Volume 379, Number 1, November 2001, pp. 136-146 Because of the high number of field

stars A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of ...

from the disc of the Milky Way, it is very difficult

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an a ...

to study as this contamination makes its size ambiguous.

Studies of NGC 3114

NGC 3114 has first been subject of studies in 1963, when Jankowitz and McCosh obtained photographic UBV photometry for 171 of its stars and photoelectric UBV photometry of 52 stars. They estimated the

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study the magnetosphere * Asteroid cluster, a small ...

to be 910

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, and ...

s 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 ...

, its mean

visual extinction Visual extinction is a neurological disorder which occurs following damage to the parietal lobe of the brain. It is similar to, but distinct from, hemispatial neglect. Visual extinction has the characteristic symptom of difficulty to perceive cont ...

E(B-V) = 0.27

and its age to range from

6\times 10^

and

2\times 10^

years. In 1988, Schneider and Weiss obtained

photometry Photometry can refer to: * Photometry (optics), the science of measurement of visible light in terms of its perceived brightness to human vision * Photometry (astronomy), the measurement of the flux or intensity of an astronomical object's electr ...

data for 122 stars, revising the cluster reddening to be

E(B-V) = 0.03

. Three years later, Sagar and Sharpless made the largest data recording of the cluster to date, obtaining BV CCD photometry of around 350 stars from seven 3.6'×5.4' regions. Because these regions were rather far from the cluster centre, a substantial contamination was expected. Nevertheless, by assuming the cluster reddening value obtained by Schneider and Weiss, they found the cluster to be

940 \pm 60

pc, which agreed with the measurements taken 28 years previously by Jankowitz and McCosh. They also found the age of the cluster to be

1-2 \times 10^

years. Finally, in 1989 Claria' et al. estimated the cluster chemical abundance, finding that NGC 3114 has basically the same

metal A metal () is a material that, when polished or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, electricity and thermal conductivity, heat relatively well. These properties are all associated wit ...

richness as the Sun, for which

= -0.04\pm0.04

(Fe -

Iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

, H -

Hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

Studies of NGC 3114

Gallery

See also

References

External links