Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Puppis (Pup)  ·  Contains:  M 47  ·  NGC 2422  ·  NGC 2425
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M47, Geoff Healey
M47
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M47

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M47, Geoff Healey
M47
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M47

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Description

The hot blue giants of the beautiful M47 star cluster…..Messier 47 (M47 or NGC 2422) is an open cluster in the mildly southern constellation of Puppis. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and in his then keynote work re-discovered by Charles Messier on 1771. It was also independently discovered by Caroline Herschel.M47 is centred about 1,600 light-years away and is about 78 million years old. The member stars have been measured down to about red dwarfs at apparent magnitude 19. There are around 500 members, the brightest being HD 60855, a magnitude 5.7 Be star. The cluster is dominated by hot class B main sequence and giant stars, but a noticeable colour contrast comes from its brightest red giants.In the top right hand corner is an even further away cluster, NGC2425 at 11,600 light years.The bright red star to the left is KQ Puppis (KQ Pup). It is a spectroscopic binary variable star in the constellation Puppis. A red supergiant star and a hot main sequence star orbit each other every 9,742 days. Its apparent magnitude varies between 4.82 and 5.17.

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M47, Geoff Healey