Platais 8, also known as the a Carinae cluster or HIP 45080 Cluster, is a small and faint open cluster located in the southern constellation Carina. It is estimated to be 440 light years distant based on parallax measurements.
The cluster was first noticed by astronomer Imants Platais in 1998. A 2005 paper suggests that Platais 8 might have formed near the area where the Scorpius-Centaurus association is located. The SIMBAD database lists the cluster having 28,185 members but the majority of the stars are field stars. In fact, there are only 32 members physically associated with the cluster. The cluster has a combined mass of and a radius of 37.2 light years. Platais 8 is rather young, with an age of only 60 million years.
Members These are the members of the cluster as identified by Canat-Gaudin et al. (2018) +Members of Cl Platais 8NamemvMK TypeDist. (ly)NotesHD 762306.57A0 V410BinaryHD 788027.33A2 IV467HD 764137.48A3 V417HD 806287.57A0/1 V442HD 78761 7.68A2 V454HD 780277.88A1 V444 The cluster also has one potential stream star located in Volans and was considered to be a background object prior to 2020. +NamemvMK TypeDist. (ly)NotesHD 718635.94G8/K0 III421HR 3346
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