The Butterfly Cluster (cataloged as Messier 6 or M6, and as NGC 6405) 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 ...

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

s 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 ...

of Scorpius. Its name derives from the vague resemblance of its shape to a

butterfly Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...

. The

Trumpler classification 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, a ...

of encodes it is rich in stars, ranks II out of IV for disparateness and greatly mixes bright with faint components. It is 3.5° to the northwest of

Messier 7 Messier 7 or M7, also designated NGC 6475 and sometimes known as the Ptolemy Cluster, is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Scorpius. The cluster is easily detectable with the naked eye, close to the "stinger" of Scorpius. With a d ...

, both north of the tail of Scorpius. The first astronomer to record the Butterfly Cluster's existence was

Giovanni Battista 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 ...

in 1654. However, Robert Burnham Jr. has proposed that the 2nd century astronomer

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importanc ...

may have seen it with the naked eye while observing its neighbor the

Ptolemy Cluster Messier 7 or M7, also designated NGC 6475 and sometimes known as the Ptolemy Cluster, is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Scorpius. The cluster is easily detectable with the naked eye, close to the "stinger" of Scorpius. With a d ...

(M7). Credit for the discovery is usually given to Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux in 1746. Charles Messier observed the cluster on May 23, 1764 and added it to his

Messier Catalog The Messier objects are a set of 110 astronomical objects catalogued by the French astronomer Charles Messier in his ''Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d'Étoiles'' (''Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters''). Because Messier was only int ...

. Estimates of the Butterfly Cluster's distance have varied over the years. Wu et al. (2009) found a distance estimate of , giving it a spatial dimension of some 12 light years. Modern measurements show its total visual brightness to be magnitude 4.2. The cluster is estimated to be 94.2 million years old. Cluster members show a slightly higher abundance of elements heavier than helium compared to the Sun; what astronomers refer to as the

metallicity In astronomy, metallicity is the abundance of elements present in an object that are heavier than hydrogen and helium. Most of the normal physical matter in the Universe is either hydrogen or helium, and astronomers use the word ''"metals"'' as a ...

. 120 stars, ranging down to visual magnitude 15.1, have been identified as most likely cluster members. Most of the bright stars in this cluster are hot, blue

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 but the brightest member is a K-type orange giant star, BM Scorpii, which contrasts sharply with its blue neighbours in photographs. BM Scorpii, is classed as a

semiregular variable star In astronomy, a semiregular variable star, a type of variable star, is a giant or supergiant of intermediate and late (cooler) spectral type showing considerable periodicity in its light changes, accompanied or sometimes interrupted by various irre ...

, its brightness varying from magnitude +5.5 to magnitude +7.0. There are also eight candidate chemically peculiar stars. The cluster is located from the Galactic Center and is following an orbit through the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...

galaxy with a low eccentricity of 0.03 and an

orbital period The orbital period (also revolution period) is the amount of time a given astronomical object takes to complete one orbit around another object. In astronomy, it usually applies to planets or asteroids orbiting the Sun, moons orbiting planets ...

of 204.2 Myr. At present it is below the galactic plane, and it will cross the plane every 29.4 Myr. As of January 2022, the Butterfly Cluster is one of the few remaining objects within the Messier Catalog to not have been photographed by the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versa ...

References

External links

Messier 6, SEDS Messier pages
* {{Sky, 17, 40.1, 00, -, 32, 13, 00, 1600 Messier objects NGC objects Open clusters Scorpius (constellation) Orion–Cygnus Arm ?

See also

References

External links