47 Tucanae (NGC 104)

Left: Photo of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae taken with the Very Large Telescope, in Chile. Right: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope photo of the core of 47 Tuc. The bright orange-red stars are red giants.

Hubble Space Telescope image of stars near the center of 47 Tuc

The second brightest globular cluster in the sky, after Omega Centauri. To the unaided eye it looks like a misty star. Binoculars clearly show an increase in brightness toward the center and a telescope with an aperture of at least 10 cm resolves some of the roughly one million member stars. Although a conspicuous naked-eye sight, 47 Tucanae (NGC 104) lies so far south, in the constellation Tucana, that it wasn't discovered by astronomers until 1751 when Nicholas de Lacaille catalogued it in his list of southern nebulous objects.

A search for Jupiter-like planets in 47 Tuc, carried out by an international team of astronomers using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, came up empty-handed. The work involved checking 34,000 stars in the cluster for signs of large transiting planets. The absence of any positive results strengthens the argument that planets are rare or nonexistent in globular clusters because of the very low concentration of heavy elements.

visual magnitude	4.9
apparent size	31' (about the size of the full moon)
diameter	120 light-years
distance	13,400 light-years (4,100 pc)
position	R.A. 0h 24m 05.7s, Dec. -72° 04' 53"

Related category

• NEBULAE AND STAR CLUSTERS

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