NGC 6752 (Globular Cluster)
A large, bright globular cluster in Pavo, about 13,400 light-years away. From Guyana it climbs only 23° above the southern horizon, so it needs a clear view south.
Globular cluster in Pavo. Magnitude 5.3.
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 27° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 7 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: Visible to the eye only from a dark site, as a fuzzy star; lost in city skies. From Guyana it only reaches 23° above the southern horizon, so you need a clear, low view south. It lies 10.3° south-west of Peacock.
- 10x50 binoculars: A round glow, brighter towards the middle.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A big, bright glow with a dense middle that a small telescope resolves at the edge; low in the south.
- A camera: Spans about 40% of an APS-C frame at 2,000 mm (field 0.7° × 0.4°); needs a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 13.2′, 42% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 5.3. Fainter than Georgetown's faintest stars (4.3) but brighter than Lethem's (6.0).
- Distance: 13,400 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 13,400 years ago.
- True size: 52 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 52 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Globular cluster
- Mass
- About 261,000 times the Sun's mass
Measured: Which generation its red giants belong to (372 measured near its centre).
- Second generation: 70.6%, born from gas the first stars enriched
- First generation: 29.4%, ± 2.3%
Gas: searches of globular clusters mostly find only upper limits (Pancino et al. 2024, arXiv:2404.05548). Hubble ultraviolet colours split its red giants into a first generation and later, chemically enriched ones: 29.4% ± 2.3% first generation among 372 red giants (NGC 6752; Milone et al. 2017, MNRAS 464, 3636, Table 2).
Also in it, not measured:
- Stellar remnants: white dwarfs and neutron stars
- Almost no gas or dust: not in this tally
How we know: Distance from Gaia, Hubble and earlier distances to its stars, combined: Baumgardt & Vasiliev 2021, MNRAS 505, 5957; Baumgardt globular cluster database, combined_table.txt, retrieved 2026-10-21 (NGC 6752: 4.12 +/- 0.04 kpc). True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2). Mass: Baumgardt globular cluster database, combined_table.txt (NGC 6752: 261,000 ± 3,340 Suns), retrieved 2026-10-21; Baumgardt & Vasiliev 2021, MNRAS 505, 5957.
More deep-sky objects: NGC 6397 (Globular Cluster) · NGC 6541 (Globular Cluster) · NGC 6388 (Globular Cluster) · S Normae Cluster (NGC 6087) · NGC 6025 (Open Cluster) · NGC 6231 (Northern Jewel Box)