IC 2395 (Open Cluster)
A very young open cluster in Vela, about 7 million years old and 2,300 light-years away. It is small on the sky but bright, magnitude 4.6.
Open cluster in Vela. Magnitude 4.6.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 35° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 38° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 29 Jan, in the middle of its season. The page works out tonight's rise, highest point and set for both towns in Guyana time (UTC-4), and where the Moon is.
What you'll see
- Your eyes: Visible to the eye only from a dark site, as a hazy knot of stars; lost in city skies. It lies 6.5° south-west of Suhail.
- 10x50 binoculars: A small hazy knot with a few stars resolved.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A small, bright knot of stars at low power.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 6′, 19% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 4.6. Fainter than Georgetown's faintest stars (4.3) but brighter than Lethem's (6.0).
- Distance: 2,270 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 2,270 years ago.
- True size: 4 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 4 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Open cluster
- Mass
- About 870 times the Sun's mass, in its stars
- Age
- About 6.8 million years (range 4.2 million years to 9.9 million years)
What is in it, not measured:
- Stars born together: from one cloud of gas, at one time
- Hot blue stars: still shining, because the cluster is young
How we know: Distance from Gaia parallaxes of its stars: Hunt & Reffert 2024, A&A 686, A42 (Gaia DR3 cluster catalogue, VizieR J/A+A/686/A42), retrieved 2026-10-21: IC 2395 696 pc; statistical 2,267-2,271 ly (16th-84th percentile); Gaia DR3 parallax zero-point systematics (about 0.02 mas) add about 1%. True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2). Mass: Hunt & Reffert 2024, A&A 686, A42 (Gaia DR3 cluster catalogue, VizieR J/A+A/686/A42), retrieved 2026-10-21, IC 2395: total 866 ± 66 Suns.
More deep-sky objects: IC 2391 (Omicron Velorum Cluster) · NGC 2547 (Open Cluster) · NGC 2477 (Open Cluster) · NGC 2516 (Southern Beehive / Diamond Cluster) · NGC 2451 (Open Clusters) · NGC 3114 (Open Cluster)