|
If you search in Google books , within the book "Sky Vistas: Astronomy for Binoculars and Richest-Field telescopes" by Crossen and Rhemann, you can find a couple of pages of detailed info about NGC 6231 and its associated broader concentration of stars known as Scorpius OB1.
I might abstract some of this info for IIS forum.
The total luminosity of NGC 6231 is comparable to that of Omega Centauri (!!), and the overall concentration of stars (cluster plus association) is a major tracer of the nearby spiral arm, that we see edge-on ; the arm runs from Sagittarius to Carina.
Oddly, this spiral arm is currently rather quiescent between Norma and Crux, with only a few major nebular complexes seen in this part of the Milky way, and these few nebulae are not very bright; there are not a lot of clusters of hot young stars that cause the interstellar medium to glow, in this part of the Milky Way.
|