NGC 3766

Open Cluster NGC 3766 (= Lacaille III.7 = Dunlop 289 = Melotte 107 = Collinder 248), type 'g', in Centaurus

[NGC 3766, AAT]
Right Ascension 11 : 36.1 (h:m)
Declination -61 : 37 (deg:m)
Distance 5.5 (kly)
Visual Brightness 5.3 (mag)
Apparent Dimension 12 (arc min)

Discovered by Lacaille in 1752.

The considerable southern open cluster NGC 3766 was discovered by Abbe Lacaille on March 5, 1752 from South Africa.

The red nebulosity you can see starting to appear on the right of NGC 3766 is from the nearby emission nebula Lambda Centauri.

NGC 3766 is a very dense open cluster and shimmers like a Pearl which is how it got it's nickname, "The Pearl Cluster."

This is a good binocular target but can also be glimpsed with the naked eye from dark skies.

The image in this page was obtained by Ray Palmer. It was taken on March 3rd, 2006 from Perth, Western Australia, with a Takahashi Epsilon 160 mounted on a Losmandy G-11at f/3.3, exposed for 20 min on Kodak Elite Chrome 200 unhypered.

  • More images by Ray Palmer

  • Jean-Claude Mermilliod's WEBDA cluster page for NGC 3766
  • SIMBAD Data of NGC 3766
  • Publications on NGC 3766 (NASA ADS)
  • Observing Reports for NGC 3766 (IAAC Netastrocatalog)
  • NGC Online data for NGC 3766

    Hartmut Frommert
    Christine Kronberg
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    Last Modification: March 28, 2006