47 Tucanae (NGC 104) is a massive, bright globular star cluster in the southern constellation Tucana, visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch near the Small Magellanic Cloud. It's the second brightest globular cluster after Omega Centauri, containing hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a 120 light-year diameter, and is located about 13,000-17,000 light-years away. The cluster is famous for its dense core, which hosts exotic objects like millisecond pulsars and a black hole-white dwarf binary system (47 Tuc X9).
Type: Globular cluster (a dense, spherical collection of ancient stars).
Location: Constellation Tucana, in the southern sky.
Distance: Approximately 13,000–17,000 light-years from Earth.
Size: About 120 light-years in diameter, containing up to a million stars.
Visibility: Visible to the naked eye (magnitude 4.1) and easily seen with binoculars or a small telescope.
Nickname: Often called "47 Tuc" or "The Toucan".
Second brightest: It is the second brightest globular cluster in the night sky, after Omega Centauri.
Exotic stars: Its dense core is a laboratory for extreme physics, containing numerous millisecond pulsars and the first confirmed black hole-white dwarf binary in the Milky Way (47 Tuc X9).
Star populations: Hubble observations have revealed two distinct populations of stars with different chemical compositions and motions.
White dwarf migration: Astronomers have observed white dwarfs migrating from the crowded center to the cluster's outskirts. Image credit: ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey
Comments