3.7.1: Open Clusters.
-
Starting with Celestia v1.3, OpenClusters can be listed in .DSC files.
Copy these files to the directory
- the clusters had catalog names (some clusters are identified only by their 1950 coordinates)
- their distances were listed.
Celestia/extras or to your personal
extras folder.
When "galaxy label rendering" is turned on, the clusters' names will appear at the appropriate places in space. You can visit those locations to see what stars are nearby. Also, you can "Mark" them so the locations will be visible when labelling is turned off. Some may have InfoURLs associated with them to provide more information.
The selection criteria for the lists of open clusters below were
The lists were obtained using the HEASARC Browser at http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/ and reformatted for Celestia.
| Deep Space Catalog file | Description |
|---|---|
|
lynga.dsc (40KB, 18Feb03) |
332 Named Open Clusters (obsolete)
Extracted from the HEASARC copy of
the 1987 Lynga Catalog.
For a description of the catalog,
see "LYNGACLUST - Lynga Open Clusters Catalog," at
|
|
openclusters.dsc (80KB, 18Feb03) |
610 Named Open Clusters (current)
This list of clusters was extracted from the HEASARC copy of "New Optically Visible Open Clusters & Candidates Catalog" by Dias,W.S. et.al.,Astronomy & Astrophysics 389, 871 (2002). For a description of the catalog, see http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/star-catalog/openclust.html |
![[open_clusters]](open_clusters.jpg)
Marked Open Clusters opencl_marked.dsc opencl_dots.dsc |
The "marked" catalog substitutes an "x" for the cluster names. It does not use the new "Mark" function. However, this does make it easy to get an overview of the clusters' distribution. The "dots" catalog substitutes a "." for better resolution. |
|
messier_open.dsc
(6KB, 19Feb03) |
31 Open Clusters.
27 of these are the open clusters originally cataloged by Messier.
Although not well known by its catalog name "Collinder 285", the "Ursa Major Moving Cluster" is very well known by its common name: "The Big Dipper." The entries for Messier's open clusters are cataloged here by the short form of their names, e.g. "M47". 2 of Messier's 27 clusters are listed with their popular names instead of their Messier numbers: "Pleiades" (M45) and "Praesepe" (M44). M44 is also known as "Beehive". These two clusters are involved in what is known as "The Hipparcos Pleiades Distance Problem." The cataloged distances of these two clusters, determined by photometry and spectroscopy, are significantly larger than the distances to their members measured by Hipparcos. The cause of these distance discrepancies is not understood and is a topic of current astrophysical research. These entries were extracted from openclusters.dsc above and "InfoURL" entries were added. |