Michael A. Stecker
mstecker@dslextreme.com


 

Berkeley-17
The Berkeley-17 open or galactic star cluster is found about 3 degrees south of
emission nebula IC 410 and 7 degrees west of SNR Simeis-147 in the constellation
Auriga. It is about 13 arcminutes in diameter and is very faint. Its age is estimated
at 12.6 billion years making it by far the oldest open cluster yet seen. It is
unusual for a galactic cluster to achieve this age because of mixing and dispersing
within the galactic disk. At this age it is older than some of the estimates for the
age of the universe!!
 
Photographic Data: An Astro-Physics 155-mm f/7 EDF refractor and 35 mm
camera were used with hypersensitized Kodak Pro 400 PPF film. A single
40-minute exposure was made while centering at RA 05 hrs, 20.5 min and
Declination +30.5 degrees. The cluster size is 13' in diameter. The image
was processed in the computer.