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NGC 2060

Star cluster in the constellation Dorado

Summary

Star cluster in the constellation Dorado

Field	Value
name	NGC 2060
image	[[File:Close-up Tarantula Nebula.jpg	300px]]
caption	An image of NGC 2060 taken by Hubble Space Telescope
credit	NASA, ESA
epoch	J2000.0
constellation	Dorado
ra
dec
dist_ly	160,000 ly
dist_pc	50,000 pc
appmag_v	9.59

NGC 2060 is a star cluster within the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, very close to the larger NGC 2070 cluster containing R136. It was discovered by John Herschel in 1836. It is a loose cluster approximately 10 million years old, within one of the Tarantula Nebula's superbubbles formed by the combined stellar winds of the cluster or by old supernovae.

NGC 2060 is often used synonymously for the supernova remnant N157B (30 Doradus B) which is a larger area of faint nebulosity and strong radio emission. The supernova occurred approximately 5000 years ago from our point of view. In 1998 a pulsar (named PSR J0537-6910) was discovered with the very fast rotation period of 16 milliseconds and the same approximate age as the supernova remnant. VFTS 102 is a runaway O-type main-sequence star found with NGC 2060, which is proposed to be a companion of the pulsar ejected at the time of the supernova explosion.

NGC 2060 has been identified as one of the few locations for OVz stars, stars with unusually strong HeII 468.6 nm absorption indicative of weak stellar winds and relatively low luminosity for the class. These stars are found in extremely young clusters and are thought to be a very early stage in the evolution of the most massive stars. They are also found in the much more massive NGC 2070 cluster nearby in the Tarantula Nebula.

References

(2013). "Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project: Unraveling Tarantula's Web. I. Observational overview and first results". The Astronomical Journal.
(1973). "Supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud". The Astrophysical Journal.
(1968). "High resolution observations of the 30 Doradus Nebula at 408 MHz". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
(2005). "Search for the elusive optical counterpart of PSR J0537?6910 with the HST Advanced Camera for Surveys". Astronomy and Astrophysics.
(2011). "The Vlt-Flames Tarantula Survey: The Fastest Rotating O-Type Star and Shortest Period Lmc Pulsar—Remnants of a Supernova Disrupted Binary?". The Astrophysical Journal.
(2013). "The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey. XIII: On the nature of O Vz stars in 30 Doradus". Astronomy.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

supernova-remnants dorado large-magellanic-cloud ngc-objects tarantula-nebula

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