This is one of the most famous clusters in the Southern Hemisphere, so my expectations were high when I finally saw it in its full glory during a trip to Namibia. Frankly, the first sight was a tiny bit disappointing because it turned out to be not a very rich cluster and not very large either. But a lot was made up for by the fun shape, the huge difference in brightness and of course the color of the stars to which it owes its nickname.

The brightest stars together form a kind of triangle with in the middle a line of 3 bright stars with different colors (like a traffic light). The top star is yellow, the middle one blue and the bottom one orange. This is a very nice sight through the telescope, but on my sketch the colors remain a bit faded. Furthermore, the cluster consists of much dimmer stars that squeeze together in angular bends, making the whole even look a bit "unreal". So in the end, I thought of it as quite an extraordinary cluster, this Jewel Box.


NGC 4755.jpg