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Brightest planet −2.20 [6]: 39 −2.94 [6]: 39 Jupiter: Planet −1.46 Sirius: Binary star system: Brightest night star −0.74 Canopus: Star −0.29 [7] Alpha Centauri AB Binary star system Part of a triple star system with Proxima Centauri: −0.05 Arcturus: Star Brightest Population II star 0.03 −0.02 Vega: Star 0.08 0.03 [8] Capella ...
It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 4.0. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years (412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away [3] [6] and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. M42 is estimated to be 25 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree).
If this object were 10 parsecs away from Earth it would appear nearly as bright in the sky as the Sun (apparent magnitude −26.744). This quasar's luminosity is, therefore, about 2 trillion (10 12) times that of the Sun, or about 100 times that of the total light of average large galaxies like our Milky Way. (Note that quasars often vary ...
The Sombrero Galaxy (also known as Messier Object 104, M104 [4] or NGC 4594) is a peculiar galaxy of unclear classification [5] in the constellation borders of Virgo and Corvus, being about 9.55 megaparsecs (31.1 million light-years) [2] from the Milky Way galaxy.
At a distance of about 444 light-years, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and the nearest Messier object to Earth, being the most obvious star cluster to the naked eye in the night sky. It is also observed to house the reflection nebula NGC 1432, an HII region. [10] Around 2330 BC it marked the vernal point.
A preliminary version of the catalogue first appeared in 1774 in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences for the year 1771. [3] [4] [5] The first version of Messier's catalogue contained 45 objects, which were not numbered. Eighteen of the objects were discovered by Messier; the rest had been previously observed by other astronomers. [6]
The brightest star in the cluster is a red giant, the variable star V11, also known as V1554 Herculis, [16] with an apparent visual magnitude of 11.95. M13 is 22,200 to 25,000 light-years away from Earth, [9] and the globular cluster is one of over one hundred that orbit the center of the Milky Way. [17] [18]
The cloud of interstellar matter of which this nebula is a part is roughly 40 light-years in diameter and has a mass of 30,000 solar masses. [3] The total mass of the Omega Nebula is an estimated 800 solar masses. [4] It is considered one of the brightest and most massive star-forming regions of our galaxy. [3]