Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cancer (Cnc)  ·  Contains:  12.26  ·  38 Leda  ·  HD75700  ·  M 67  ·  NGC 2678  ·  NGC 2682
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Vignettes of the Sun's Life Amongst the King Cobra Cluster, Stardust23
Vignettes of the Sun's Life Amongst the King Cobra Cluster, Stardust23

Vignettes of the Sun's Life Amongst the King Cobra Cluster

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Vignettes of the Sun's Life Amongst the King Cobra Cluster, Stardust23
Vignettes of the Sun's Life Amongst the King Cobra Cluster, Stardust23

Vignettes of the Sun's Life Amongst the King Cobra Cluster

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Description

Messier 67, known as the King Cobra Cluster, is one of the oldest open clusters discovered, being approximately 4 billion years old. Many stars within the cluster are remarkably similar to our Sun, particularly star YBP 1194.

Vignettes of the Sun's Life:

YBP 1194 is one of the best solar analogs to our Sun, having nearly the same temperature, metallicity, and stellar class. Only its age uncertainty prevents it from being a true "solar twin," though the Sun's age of 4.6 billion years is well within this uncertainty. Thus, YBP 1194 may well be the closest approximation of how the Sun would look to an alien civilization peering through their telescope at us from some distant part of the Milky Way. 

There are also some red-giant branch (RGB*) stars, which are stars that have expanded to red giants after exhausting their core hydrogen, but have not yet started fusing helium. Our Sun will start transitioning to a RGB* star in approximately 6.35 billion years from now, and once transitioned it will "climb" the RGB* branch for approximately 600 million years. Then, it will experience a helium flash and begin fusing helium in a stable horizontal branch phase. A horizontal branch (HB*) star is tagged towards the center of the image.

Also in the image are a few tagged white dwarves (WD*), which the Sun will also become after its giant phases have concluded.

Also:

Unrelated to the Sun, there are a few other interesting objects in the image:

Leda, or 38 Leda, is a dark asteroid in the main asteroid belt with a diameter of approximately 115 km (78 mi). It appears stretched/smeared in the image due to its relative motion during the integration time.

CI* NGC 2682 SAND 628 is a cataclysmic binary (CataclyV*) star system, consisting of a white dwarf pulling material from a companion star into an accretion disk. The two stars orbit each other every 1-15 hours.

There are a few "chemically peculiar stars," which are tagged with "(Pec*)." These stars have unusual quantities of metals. An eclipsing binary (EB*) is also tagged, which are two stars in a system that are so close together they eclipse one another as they revolve around each other.

A few quasars have been tagged with (QSO), along with one Seyfert-2 galaxy, which is similar to a quasar except the galaxy structure itself is still visible.

Stars with known exoplanets have been tagged with their planet initial and "(Pl)." For example, star BD+12 1917 is tagged with the name of its exoplanet, BD+12 1917b.

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Vignettes of the Sun's Life Amongst the King Cobra Cluster, Stardust23