M93

From South Dublin Astronomical Society

M93
Type	Open Cluster
NGC	NGC 2447
Constellation	Puppis
Right Ascension	7h 44.6m
Declination	-23° 52'
Magnitude	6
Size	22 arc min.
Image:M93 messier image.jpg

M93 is a beautiful telescopic cluster showing two lovely chains of stars tapering almost to a point with a smaller thread of suns pointing away from one of the curves. The lower powers afforded by binoculars show those converging chains blurring into a ghostly comma with some of the more brilliant stars speckling the foreground. The cluster can be found 1½º northwest of magnitude 3.3 Puppis, a yellow supergiant with a luminosity of 5,800 suns. The whole field is peppered with many faint stars. M93 lies 3,600 light years away and contains about 80 members with the brightest classed as blue giants of type B9 on the HR diagram. They are relatively youthful stars — 100 million years old with luminosities 10,000 times that of the Sun — racing through their life-cycle at a furious rate.