The Wishing Well Cluster, NGC 3532, is a rich open cluster in Carina, bright enough to see by eye and scattered like coins glinting at the bottom of a well.
At a glance
| type | open star cluster |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 1,540 light-years (472 pc) |
| its light left it | 1,540 years ago |
| size in the piece | about 22 light-years acrossmodel |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with. Model marks a property of the piece’s galaxy model rather than a measurement.
About Wishing Well Cluster
NGC 3532 is a large, loose open cluster in the southern constellation Carina, lying close in the sky to the Carina Nebula. It holds a great many stars born together from one cloud, spread over an elongated patch wider than the full Moon. Through binoculars or a small telescope its stars look like silver coins at the bottom of a well, which is where the nickname comes from. John Herschel counted it among the finest clusters in the southern sky.
It is a middle-aged cluster: old enough that its most massive stars have already swollen into orange and red giants or burnt out as white dwarfs, young enough that it has not yet dissolved into the disc. That makes it a useful laboratory for how stars of a known common age evolve. It was also the target of the Hubble Space Telescope’s first-light image, taken to test the telescope before its flaw was understood.
What you see in the piece
In the piece it is a loose swarm of stars, each coloured by its temperature, with a few warm giants among the white. Seen from the Sun it shrinks to a faint smudge low in the southern Milky Way; fly to it and it opens into separate suns.
Questions
How far away is the Wishing Well Cluster?
The Wishing Well Cluster is 1,540 light-years (472 pc) from the Sun, so its light left it 1,540 years ago.
Can you see the Wishing Well Cluster with the naked eye?
Yes, from a dark southern site it is visible without optical aid as a hazy patch in Carina, and binoculars resolve it into many stars.