Would you see brighter stars in the sky from inside an open cluster or a globular cluster?

It would depend on the open cluster. Although both types of clusters are about the same size, globular clusters have thousands more stars all of about the same mass ( 0.5 of the Sun or so). Open clusters are often composed of the more luminous, massive stars and although the sky would have fewer of them, they would be many magnitudes brighter than globular cluster stars. But not all open star clusters have such luminous stars as the Pleiades or H and Chi Persi which have mainly B-type stars. The average separations between globular cluster stars in the core is much smaller than in typical open clusters, so I would have to guess that your view from inside a typical globular cluster is probably prettier than inside a typical open cluster with few B- type stars.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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