NGC 3114 (Open Cluster)
A large, bright open cluster in Carina, in a rich part of the southern Milky Way. Gaia counts about 1,600 members and a mass of about 4,200 Suns.
Open cluster in Carina. Magnitude 4.2.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 23° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 26° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 18 Feb, 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. From Guyana it only reaches 23° above the southern horizon, so you need a clear, low view south. It lies 5.8° east of Aspidiske.
- 10x50 binoculars: Resolves into dozens of stars.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A big, rich field of bright stars at the lowest power; low in the south from Guyana.
- 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: 12.3′, 40% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 4.2. Brighter than the faintest stars Georgetown shows (4.3), and Lethem's (6.0).
- Distance: 3,220 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 3,220 years ago.
- True size: 12 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 12 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Open cluster
- Mass
- About 4,200 times the Sun's mass, in its stars
- Age
- About 170 million years (range 100 million years to 290 million years)
What is in it, not measured:
- Stars born together: from one cloud of gas, at one time
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 3114 987 pc; statistical 3,216-3,220 ly (16th-84th percentile); Gaia DR3 parallax zero-point systematics (about 0.02 mas) add about 2%. 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 3114: total 4,207 ± 206 Suns.
More deep-sky objects: NGC 3324 (Nebula and Cluster) · Southern Pleiades (IC 2602) · Wishing Well Cluster (NGC 3532) · NGC 3603 (Nebula and Cluster) · Running Chicken Nebula (IC 2944) · IC 2391 (Omicron Velorum Cluster)