NGC 2547 (Open Cluster)
A young open cluster in Vela, about 22 million years old and 1,250 light-years away. Its brightest stars make a tight, bright knot for binoculars.
Open cluster in Vela. Magnitude 4.7.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 34° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 37° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 20 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 7.6° north-west of Alsephina.
- 10x50 binoculars: A small hazy knot with a few stars resolved.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A compact group of bright 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: 7.8′, 25% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 4.7. Fainter than Georgetown's faintest stars (4.3) but brighter than Lethem's (6.0).
- Distance: 1,250 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 1,250 years ago, around the year 780.
- True size: 2.8 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 2.8 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Open cluster
- Mass
- About 530 times the Sun's mass, in its stars
- Age
- About 22 million years (range 12 million years to 41 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: NGC 2547 382 pc; statistical 1,247-1,248 ly (16th-84th percentile); Gaia DR3 parallax zero-point systematics (about 0.02 mas) add under 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, NGC 2547: total 530 ± 54 Suns.
More deep-sky objects: IC 2395 (Open Cluster) · IC 2391 (Omicron Velorum Cluster) · NGC 2477 (Open Cluster) · NGC 2516 (Southern Beehive / Diamond Cluster) · NGC 2451 (Open Clusters) · NGC 3114 (Open Cluster)