NGC 2362, also known as Caldwell 64, is an

open cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, and ...

of stars in the southern

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the e ...

Canis Major Canis Major is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, southern celestial hemisphere. In the second century, it was included in Ptolemy's 48 constellations, and is counted among the 88 modern constellations. Its name is Latin fo ...

. It was discovered by the Italian court astronomer

Giovanni Batista Hodierna Giovanni Battista Hodierna, also spelled as Odierna (April 13, 1597 – April 6, 1660) was an Italian astronomer at the court of Giulio Tomasi, Duke of Palma (Palma di Montechiaro). He compiled a catalogue of comets and other celestial object ...

, who published his finding in 1654.

William Herschel Frederick William Herschel (; german: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline H ...

called it a "beautiful cluster", while

William Henry Smyth Admiral William Henry Smyth (21 January 1788 – 8 September 1865) was a Royal Navy officer, hydrographer, astronomer and numismatist. He is noted for his involvement in the early history of a number of learned societies, for his hydrographic ...

said it "has a beautiful appearance, the bright white star being surrounded by a rich gathering of minute companions, in a slightly elongated form, and nearly vertical position". In the past it has also been listed as a

nebula A nebula ('cloud' or 'fog' in Latin; pl. nebulae, nebulæ or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regio ...

, but in 1930 Robert J. Trumpler found no evidence of nebulosity. The brightest member star system is

Tau Canis Majoris Tau Canis Majoris (τ CMa, τ Canis Majoris, 30 CMa) is a multiple star system in the constellation Canis Major. It is approximately 5,000 light years distant from Earth and is the brightest member of the open cluster NGC 2362 NGC ...

, and therefore it is sometimes called the Tau Canis Majoris Cluster. The cluster is located at a distance of approximately 1.48 kpc from the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

, and appears associated with the giant

Sh2-310 that lies at the same distance, about one degree to the east. This giant

H II region An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundreds ...

is being ionized by the brighter members of the NGC 2362 cluster. NGC 2362 is a relatively young 4–5 million years in age but is devoid of star-forming gas and dust, indicating that the

star formation Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in The "medium" is present further soon.-->interstellar space

process has come to a halt. It is a massive open cluster, with more than 500

solar mass The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass ...

es, an estimated 100-150 member stars, and an additional 500 forming a halo around the cluster. Of these cluster members, only around 35 show evidence of a debris disk. There is one slightly

evolved Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation t ...

O-type star An O-type star is a hot, blue-white star of spectral type O in the Yerkes classification system employed by astronomers. They have temperatures in excess of 30,000 kelvin (K). Stars of this type have strong absorption lines of ionised helium, st ...

, Tau Canis Majoris, and around 40

B-type star A B-type main-sequence star (B V) is a main-sequence (hydrogen-burning) star of spectral type B and luminosity class V. These stars have from 2 to 16 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 10,000 and 30,000 K. B-type stars ...

s still on the

main sequence In astronomy, the main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Her ...

. Only one candidate classical

Be star Be stars are a heterogeneous set of stars with B spectral types and emission lines. A narrower definition, sometimes referred to as ''classical Be stars'', is a non-supergiant B star whose spectrum has, or had at some time, one or more Balmer e ...

has been found, as of 2005.

Gallery

Starshine in Canis Major NGC 2362.tif, NGC 2362 image created as part of the

ESO The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based ast ...

Cosmic Gems programme. NGC 2362 NASA.jpg, The stars of NGC 2362 surrounding τ CMa (

Infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

image taken by the

Spitzer Space Telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, f ...

)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:NGC 2362 Open clusters Canis Major 2362 064b