- M 93 (NGC 2447)
M 93 is a small, wedge-shaped open cluster lying within the southern Winter Milky Way in the constellation Puppis. It was discovered by Charles Messier on March 20, 1781, and was the last object that he himself discovered. The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 6.2 and is located on the far side of our Galaxy's Orion Arm at a distance of 3380 LY. The total cluster has a diameter of 23 LY, although its bright core has a diameter of only 2.3 LY. M 93 contains numerous blue supergiants of spectral class B, but also eight red giants. The two brightest (Ara 2064 and Ara 2066) can be seen along the top edge of the cluster core in my image. This distribution of stellar classes gives M 93 an estimated age of around 400 million years.
M 93 contains over a hundred member stars, but its location in a rich portion of the Milky Way stream makes it less impressive than if it were located outside the stream of the Milky Way. An interesting feature in my image is the concave arc of brighter stars spanning the upper right corner. The brightest star in this group (located midway up along the right edge of the image) is the magnitude 5.62 blue-white giant HD 62747, located at a distance of 2509 LY from us.
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