M29 (Open Cluster)
A small, young open cluster in Cygnus, 1.8° south of Sadr, set in a crowded part of the Milky Way. Dust between us dims it: without that dust it would look several times brighter.
Open cluster in Cygnus. Magnitude 6.6.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 58° above the northern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 55° above the northern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 26 Jul, 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: Not visible to the eye. It lies 1.8° south of Sadr.
- 10x50 binoculars: A small hazy knot with a few stars resolved.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A small box of a few bright stars at low power, against a busy Milky Way background.
- 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: 3.6′, 12% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 6.6. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 5,600 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 5,600 years ago.
- True size: 5.8 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 5.8 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Open cluster
- Mass
- About 500 times the Sun's mass, in its stars
- Age
- About 6.4 million years (range 4 million years to 8.9 million years)
- Notable
- Dust in front of it dims it strongly; without it, M29 would look several times brighter.
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: NGC 6913 1,709 pc; statistical 5,555-5,592 ly (16th-84th percentile); Gaia DR3 parallax zero-point systematics (about 0.02 mas) add about 3%. 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, NGC 6913: total 455 ± 119 Suns.
More deep-sky objects: M39 (Open Cluster) · M56 (Globular Cluster) · M71 (Globular Cluster) · IC 1396 (Elephant's Trunk Nebula) · Globular Cluster M15 · Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380)