IC 2395

STAR CLUSTEROpen cluster

ILLUSTRATION FROM OPEN CLUSTER · MAJOR AXIS 6′

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OVERVIEW

] STAR CLUSTER

IC 2395 is an open cluster in the constellation Vela, 2269 from Earth, shining at apparent magnitude 4.60 (). Other catalogues list it as C 0839-480, C 0841-479 and MWSC 1537.

WHAT IT IS
Open cluster
HOW FAR
2269

The light arriving now left it that long ago.

HOW BIG ON THE SKY
6.0

Small enough that the full Moon would cover it several times over.

HOW BRIGHT (V)

Bright enough for the naked eye, under a sky dark enough.

WHERE TO LOOK
Vela

The patch of sky it sits in, as seen from Earth.

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THE MODEL

] LIGHT ALONG THE RAY
OUTSIDE THE SURVEYED VOLUME · DRAG TO ORBIT

CALCULATED · NOT AN OBSERVATION · ANGULAR SIZE AT THE CATALOGUED DISTANCE · OPEN CLUSTER · MAJOR AXIS 6′ · NO SURFACE — DRAWN AS A VOLUME · MEMBERS DRAWN, NOT COUNTED

A cloud of gas glowing at the lines its class emits, brightest in the middle and fading through the colour of the outer gas. The shape of it is the catalogued class; the flattening is the catalogued axis ratio read as the object's own shape rather than as a tilt, because this is not a disc and its ellipticity is not an inclination. Nothing measured the depth, so what is drawn is the roundest object that matches the ellipse the catalogue holds. Every member is drawn at the one temperature its class implies; how many are drawn is a drawing choice and not a population. Drag it, or use the arrow keys, to look from another direction. The stars behind are the 498,631 this catalogue holds real distances for, drawn from where the camera actually is — but every one of them is within 170 parsecs of the Sun and this object is much further out, so from here that whole neighbourhood is a knot in one direction and the rest of the sky is empty. The view you land on looks the other way; turn back towards the Sun and the stars come with it. What the readout says is which of the two the frame is pointed at. The emptiness is not a missing backdrop — it is the edge of what this catalogue has measured.

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OBSERVING

] FROM WHERE YOU ARE

What it takes to see IC 2395 for yourself. Everything in this part of the page is worked out for a real horizon, a real night and the equipment you say you have.

TONIGHT

Say where you are, and this line says when IC 2395 is worth going out for.

[

THROUGH AN EYEPIECE

] 150 MM TELESCOPE · 25 MM EYEPIECE
NE
FIELD 1.08°

Bright enough to see with your eyes alone, once you are away from town lights. IC 2395 covers 6.0′ of sky against a of 1.08°, so at 48× it is a small patch, centred.

48×
1.08
1.25
13.0
SIZE ON THE SKY
6.0
FILLS OF THE FIELD
9% of the width
APPARENT MAGNITUDE ()
4.60 · within reach

IC 2395 is not a point of light, so the limit above is the wrong one to hold it against: the same brightness spread over 6.0′ of sky is harder than a star of it, and goes first. Catalogued sizes are measured to a photographic contour, and the part an eye sees is usually smaller.

FIND IT ON THE SKY MAP ↗
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APPARENT PLACE

] EQUINOX J2026.8

Where a telescope has to be pointed today, which is not quite where the catalogue records the object: the coordinate grid itself has turned since the year 2000 the catalogue is referred to.

RIGHT ASCENSION
DECLINATION
GRID TURNED SINCE
10.4
PROPER MOTION SINCE
none published

Computed for 2026-10-11 00:00 UT. No proper motion is published for IC 2395, so nothing here moves the object; what separates this from the catalogued position above is the coordinate grid turning under it — about fifty arcseconds a year of precession since 2000, and the small nodding of the Earth’s axis on top of that. The catalogue it came from publishes no error for that position, so nothing here says how far this arithmetic can be trusted — the digits above are as precise as the place they were computed from, and no more. Aberration, parallax and refraction are left out. Aberration swings every position by up to twenty arcseconds over a year; parallax stays under an arcsecond for all but the nearest stars; refraction is nothing overhead and about half a degree at the horizon, where it answers to the air, not the sky. The same figure for any date.

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CATALOG DATA

] 8 FIELDS

The raw catalogue values, as the source published them, with the error bars where one was published — sorted by what each set of figures is about rather than by the order they happened to be stored in.

HOW BRIGHT IT IS

What the light adds up to, measured through one filter at a time. A magnitude is a brightness on a backwards scale — the smaller the number, the brighter the object.

Apparent magnitude ()

WHERE IT IS AND HOW IT MOVES

Position, motion across the sky and the size it covers on it. These are measurements of the object as seen from here, so every one of them depends on where here is.

18
Redshift (z)
Major axis
6

OTHER NAMES AND NUMBERS

The identifiers other catalogues file this object under, for anyone joining this data to theirs.

OpenNGC type code
OCl
Wikidata item
Q2637964
Wikipedia article
IC 2395

WHERE THESE FIGURES CAME FROM

Which catalogue, paper or model each of the fields above was read from, where the source named one.

Distance catalogue entry
IC 2395
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ALSO KNOWN AS

] 4 DESIGNATIONS
  • IAU cluster C 0839-480
  • IAU cluster C 0841-479
  • IC IC 2395
  • MWSC MWSC 1537
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LOOK IT UP ELSEWHERE

] 3 SERVICES

Each link carries the identifier printed beside it. Nothing on this page is a measurement of our own, so a number that disagrees with one of these is worth reporting — and a service that has never catalogued this object under this name will say so plainly.

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CITE THIS PAGE

] DR1

This page is live and its numbers move when an upstream refreshes, so the citation names the release the rows belong to rather than the day you read them. The release itself is frozen, republished as a bundle, and is what a data-availability statement should point at.

PLAIN TEXT
SpaceCatalog. IC 2395 [catalogue entry]. Data release DR1 (2026-08-21). https://spacecatalog.org/object/ic-2395
BIBTEX
@misc{spacecatalog_ic-2395,
  author       = {{SpaceCatalog}},
  title        = {{IC 2395}},
  howpublished = {SpaceCatalog, data release DR1 (2026-08-21)},
  year         = {2026},
  url          = {https://spacecatalog.org/object/ic-2395},
  note         = {Catalogue entry, data release DR1 (2026-08-21). Values from OpenNGC.}
}

The values above were taken from OpenNGC — CC-BY-SA-4.0. Citing this page does not replace citing that catalogue, and its licence is share-alike: the terms reach whatever you build from these rows.

That catalogue asks for this acknowledgement: OpenNGC, Mattia Verga (github.com/mattiaverga/OpenNGC). Fields derived from it stay under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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RELATED OBJECTS

] 8 LINKED