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 ...
light year
A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...
s (25.2 kiloparsecs) away. NGC 5634 has an apparent magnitude of about 10 and a diameter of 4 or 5 arcminutes. Its Shapley–Sawyer Concentration Class is IV, meaning the cluster shows intermediate rich concentrations. The star near the upper right is the eleventh-magnitude UCAC2 29844847. There is also a bright orange giant, HD 127119, about 1.3 arcminutes away from the cluster.
NGC 5634 was once likely a member of the
Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
The Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy (Sgr dSph), also known as the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (Sgr dE or Sag DEG), is an elliptical loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It contains four globular clusters in ...
. The galaxy itself is being pulled apart by tidal forces from the Milky Way, similar to how NGC 5634 was pulled from the Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy.