The sky around Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree at true scale, north up and east left, with stars to magnitude 8. The circles show the field of a low-power eyepiece and of 10×50 binoculars.
Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree is an open cluster in Canis Major, 7,300 light-years away
Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree (RCW 14, NGC 2367, Cr 137) is an open cluster in the constellation Canis Major, 7,300 light-years away. spans 3.5′ of sky, about 7.4 light-years across. It is a telescope object, 6 inches or larger, and it is highest in the evening sky in February.
Open cluster: a loose group of a few dozen to a few thousand young stars born together from one cloud of gas. They drift apart over a few hundred million years and lie in the disk of the Milky Way.
Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree is RCW 14 in the RCW catalog of southern H-alpha regions
Finding Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree from Sirius
Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree lies 9.7° southeast of Sirius, the magnitude -1.4 star. A fist held at arm's length covers about 10°.
Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree is highest in the evening in February
The chart gives its height above the horizon at 9 pm through the year, from 60°N to 40°S. It can be seen from the whole southern hemisphere and north to about 68°N, and never sets south of 68°S.
Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree is 7,300 light-years away
The light seen from Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree tonight left it about 7,300 years ago. It ranks 30 of 47 by distance among the RCW nebulae with a measured distance. Distance source: Gaia DR3, Hunt and Reffert 2023.
Objects within 6° of Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree
