Jewel Box
A small, bright cluster beside the Southern Cross, with one orange star among the blue.
Tonight from
Rise, highest point and set are worked out on your device for the place above.
What it is
- Kind of object
- Open star cluster
- Distance
- 6,500 light years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 4.2, visible to the eye from a dark site, easy in binoculars
- Size in the sky
- About a quarter of the width of the full Moon
- Constellation
- Crux
- Catalogue
- NGC 4755
Figures from OpenNGC, CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikipedia, “Jewel Box (star cluster)”, CC BY-SA 4.0 (SIMBAD); magnitude SEDS. All sources
Near it in the sky
- MimosaA blue-white giant in Crux, right beside it, a finger’s width away.
- AcruxA blue-white subgiant in Crux, about three fingers away.
- GacruxA red giant in Crux, about three fingers away.
- HadarA blue-white giant in Centaurus, about a fist away.
- Rigil KentaurusA yellow main-sequence star in Centaurus, about a fist away.