- NGC 2539
NGC 2539 is an attractive open cluster lying along the edge of the Winter Milky Way stream in the constellation Puppis. It lies next to the relatively bright (visual magnitude 4.72) spectral class G yellow star 19 Puppis. This star lies at a distance of 176 LY, while the cluster lies at a distance of 4090 LY— thus, 19 Puppis is clearly a foreground star. NGC 2539 contains around 60 member stars. It has an apparent diameter of 15 arc-min in the sky and has a visual magnitude of 6.5. This should make it just visible to the naked eye under perfect viewing conditions.
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