Q696260
Sign in to saveAlso known as New General Catalogue 188, C 1, Polarissima Cluster
open cluster in the constellation Cepheus
Key facts
- Right ascension
- 00 48 26
- Declination
- +85 ° 15.3 ′
- Distance
- 6,000 ly ( 1.85 kpc )
- Absolute magnitude v
- Unknown
- Apparent dimensions v
- 15 ′
- Radius
- 11.8 ly
- Estimated age
- 6.41 ± 0.33 Gyr
- Other designations
- Caldwell 1, Cr 6, Mel 2
- Constellation
- Cepheus
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- open cluster
- Part of
- Milky Way
- Constellation
- Cepheus
- Distance from Earth
- 2301.442
- Image
- NGC 188.jpg
Show 13 more facts
- declination component of proper motion
- -0.956
- Commons category
- NGC 188
- catalog code
- [KPS2012] MWSC 0074
- discoverer or inventor
- John Frederick William Herschel
- time of discovery or invention
- 1831-11-03
- apparent magnitude
- 8.1
- right ascension
- 12.1083
- declination
- 85.2550
- epoch
- J2000.0
- radial velocity
- -41.86
- parallax
- 0.5053
- metallicity
- 0.11
- right ascension component of proper motion
- -2.308
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
HR diagram showing the main sequence turnoff of NGC 188 and M 67, indicating their relatively high ages NGC 188 (also known as Caldwell 1 or the Polarissima Cluster) is an open cluster in the constellation Cepheus. It was discovered by John Herschel in 1825. Unlike most open clusters that drift apart after a few million years because of the gravitational interaction of our Milky Way galaxy, NGC 188 lies far above the plane of the galaxy and is one of the most ancient of open clusters known, at approximately 6.8 billion years old.
NGC 188 is very close to the North Celestial Pole, under five degrees away, and in the constellation of Cepheus at an estimated 6,000 light-years' distance, this puts it slightly above the Milky Way's disc and further from the center of the galaxy than the Sun.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q696260” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.