IYA Live Telescope Today – NGC 2516

On April 6, 2009 the IYA Live Telescope was busy broadcasting from the Southern Galactic Telescope Hosting facility and fulfilling your “100 Hours of Astronomy” requests. Are you ready to take a look at the video that came from the adventure and to add it to our library? Then tell Jamie in Edinburgh that Aunty Ren said to wake up as we view Ana Tomsa of Croatia’s suggestion of NGC 2516…

The following factual information is a cut and paste from Wikipedia:

NGC 2516: Constellation – CARINA

Southern open cluster NGC 2516 – The Diamond Cluster – was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751-1752.

Called The Diamond Cluster because of its stellar clarity. The cluster itself is easily visible with the naked eye from dark skies but binoculars will yield a much better view. The Diamond Cluster contains two beautiful 5th magnitude red giants and three double stars. A small telescope would be required to split the double stars. It contains about 100 stars that appear about the same size as a full moon.

NGC 2516 and the recently discovered nearby star cluster Mamajek 2 in Ophiuchus have similar age and metallicity. Recently, kinematic evidence was presented by E. Jilinksi and coauthors that suggests that these two stellar groups may have formed in the same star-forming complex some 135 million years ago

We would very much like to thank Ana M. Tomsa of Croatia (for Jamie in Edinburgh, from Aunty Ren) for her suggestion of NGC 2516 and we hope you like the view! As always, you can visit the remote telescope by clicking on the IYA “LIVE Remote Cam” Logo to your right. We’ll be broadcasting whenever skies are clear and dark in Central Victoria! Enjoy…

(Information Source: Wikipedia)