Spanning across about 12 light years of
space, this clump of around 50 stars began their life around 78
million years ago. Now cruising through space some 1600 light
years away from Earth, the group continues to distance itself
from our solar system at a speed of 9 kilometers per second. For
the most part, Messier 47 is a whole lot like the Pleiades star
cluster – its brightest member shining just around magnitude 6
and holding a spectral class B2. But, here you will also find
two orange K giants with luminosity of about 200 times that of
the Sun. At M47′s center you’ll find binary star, Sigma 1121,
with components of magnitude 7.9 both and separated by 7.4 arc
seconds.
