Description (Wikipedia)Messier 36 or
M36, also known as
NGC 1960, is an
open cluster of stars in the
somewhat northernAurigaconstellation. It was discovered by
Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654, who described it as a nebulous patch.
[5] The cluster was independently re-discovered by
Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749, then
Charles Messier observed it in 1764 and added it to his catalogue.
[6] It is about 1,330
pc (4,340
light years) away from
Earth.
[1] The cluster is very similar to the
Pleiades cluster (
M45), and if as far away it would be of similar apparent magnitude.
[7]This cluster has an
angular diameter of 10
′[2] and a core radius of 3.2′.
[8] It has a mass of roughly 746
M☉ and a linear
tidal radius of 10.6 ± 1.6
parsecs (34.6 ± 5.2
ly).
[3] Based upon
photometry, the age of the cluster has been estimated by Wu
et al. (2009) as 25.1
Myr[1] and 26.3+3.2
−5.2 Myr by Bell et al. (2013). The luminosity of the stars that have not yet depleted their lithium implies an age of 22±4 Myr, in good agreement with these older estimates.
[8]Personal noteMy attention was drawn to this object by its description in the Annals of the Deep Sky, Volume 2, by Kanipe and Webb. Not so much to the cluster but to the jet like structure that it contains called Holoea (magnified in the insert picture). They describe Holoea as a "Nebulous object with a star-and-tail-like structure and a high velocity, bioplar outflow that was discovered in the SW part of M36 in 1995 (Magnier et al, 1996)." The bi-polar outflow that we can see on my image has a velocity of "about 650 km/sec - unusualy higyh for a low mass star".
Holoea is situated just to the top left of the center of the larger image.
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