NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae (Bruce Rohrlach)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Tucana (Tuc) · Contains: 47 Tuc Cluster · NGC 104 · NGC 121

Powered byPixInsight

NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae

Powered byPixInsight

NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae

Beautiful clear skies here in Melbourne after 11pm last night, allowing me to track down 47 Tucanae. Also known as NGC 104 and Caldwell Object 106, it is the second brightest globular cluster in our galaxy (after Omega Centauri). It is one of the most massive globular clusters within the M.Way galaxy, and contains around a million stars. At magnitude 4.0 it looks like a misty star to the naked eye observer, visually near the Small Magellanic Cloud (a dwarf satellite galaxy of the M.Way). Under ideal lighting conditions, the stars of the 47 Tucanae cluster are spread over an angular area equivalent to the full moon, even though the globular is around 13,400 light years away.

The core of 47 Tucanae has so many stars in such close proximity to each other, that if our sun and it's nearest star 'system' (the Alpha Centauri triple star) were placed within the core of 47 Tucanae, the night sky between the sun and Alpha Centauri would be lit by some 10,000 suns.

The result of this intense globular concentration of stars (of which only the tiniest fraction of the brightest are imaged here) is that there is intense gravitational interaction between the stars within the cluster, such that larger stars are shuffled inward whilst smaller stars are shuffled outward, in a process of stellar size sorting.

And finally - Hubble scanned some 34,000 stars within 47 Tucanae looking for Jupiter-sized transits - and came up empty handed, suggesting that globular clusters have very low levels of heavy elements.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3537700
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae

NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae

NGC 104 - 47 Tucanae

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information