Key facts
- Right ascension
- 19 20 53
- Declination
- +37 ° 46.3 ′
- Distance
- ~13,300 ly (4078 pc)
- Apparent magnitude v
- +9.5
- Apparent dimensions v
- 16'
- Estimated age
- 8.46 ± 0.66 Gyr
- Other designations
- C 1919+377, Cl Berkeley 46, OCl 142.0, GC 4492
- Constellation
- Lyra
via Wikipedia infobox
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
NGC 6791 is an open star cluster in the Lyra constellation. It was discovered by Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke in 1853. At roughly 8 billion years old, and with an iron to hydrogen abundance ratio that is more than twice that of the Sun, it is one of the oldest and most metal-rich clusters in the Milky Way. This is contrary to the typical rule-of-thumb where older means more metal-poor. Compounded with the fact that it has an unusually high population of stars, NGC 6791 is among the most studied clusters in the sky.
Age studies
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Q933252” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.