Open clusters are strongly concentrated toward the Milky Way. They form a flattened disklike system 2,000 light-years thick, with a diameter of about 30,000 light-years. The younger clusters serve to trace the spiral arms of the Galaxy, since they are found invariably to lie in them. Very distant clusters are hard to detect against the rich Milky Way background. A classification based on central concentration and richness is used and has been extended to nearly 1,000 open clusters. Probably about half the known open clusters contain fewer than 100 stars, but the richest have 1,000 or more. The largest have apparent diameters of several degrees, the diameter of the Taurus cluster being 400 arc minutes (nearly seven arc degrees) and that of the Perseus cluster being 240 arc minutes.

The linear diameters range from the largest, 75 light-years, down to 5 light-years. Increasingly, it has been found that a large halo of actual cluster members surrounds the more-noticeable core and extends the diameter severalfold. Cluster membership is established through common motion, common distances, and so on. Tidal forces and stellar encounters lead to the disintegration of open clusters over long periods of time as stars “evaporate” from the cluster.

Stars of all spectral classes from O to M (high to low temperatures) are found in open clusters, but the frequency of types varies from one cluster to another, as does concentration near the centre. In some (O or OB clusters), the brightest stars are blue, very hot spectral types O or B. In others, they are whitish yellow, cooler spectral type F. High-luminosity stars are more common than in the solar neighbourhood, and dwarfs are much more scarce. The brightest stars in some open clusters are 150,000 times as bright as the Sun. The luminosity of the brightest stars at the upper end of the main sequence varies in clusters from about −8 to −2 visual magnitude. (Visual magnitude is a magnitude measured through a yellow filter, the term arising because the eye is most sensitive to yellow light.)

Because of the high luminosity of their brightest stars, some open clusters have a total luminosity as bright as that of some globular clusters (absolute magnitude of −8), which contain thousands of times as many stars. In the centre of rich clusters, the stars may be only one light-year apart. The density can be 100 times that of the solar neighbourhood. In some, such as the Pleiades and the Orion clusters, nebulosity is a prominent feature, while others have none. In clusters younger than 25 million years, masses of neutral hydrogen extending over three times the optical diameter of the cluster have been detected with radio telescopes. Many of the OB clusters mentioned above contain globules—relatively small, apparently spherical regions of absorbing matter. The most-numerous variables connected with young open clusters are the T Tauri type (see below) and related stars that occur by the hundreds in some nebulous regions of the sky. Conspicuously absent from open clusters is the type most common in globular clusters, the RR Lyrae stars. Other variables include eclipsing binary stars (both Algol type and contact binaries), flare stars, and spectrum variables, such as Pleione. The last-named star, one of the Pleiades, is known to cast off shells of matter from time to time, perhaps as a result of its high rotational speed (up to 322 km/sec). About two dozen open clusters are known to contain Population I Cepheids, and since the distances of these clusters can be determined accurately (see below), the absolute magnitudes of those Cepheids are well determined. This has been of paramount importance in calibrating the period-luminosity relation for Cepheids, and thus in determining the distance scale of the universe.

The colour- or spectrum-magnitude diagram derived from the individual stars holds vital information. Colour-magnitude diagrams are available for about 200 clusters on the UBV photometric system, in which colour is measured from the amount of light radiated by the stars in the ultraviolet, blue, and visual (yellow) wavelength regions. In young clusters, stars are found along the luminous bright blue branch, whereas in old clusters, beyond a turnoff only a magnitude or two brighter than the Sun, they are red giants and supergiants.

Distances can be determined by many methods—geometric, photometric, and spectroscopic—with corrections for interstellar absorption. For the very nearest clusters, direct (trigonometric) parallaxes may be obtained, and these are inversely proportional to the distance. Distances can be derived from proper motions, apparent magnitudes of the brightest stars, and spectroscopically from individual bright stars. Colour-magnitude diagrams, fitted to a standard plot of the main sequence, provide a common and reliable tool for determining distance. The nearest open cluster is the nucleus of the Ursa Major group at a distance of 65 light-years; the farthest clusters are thousands of light-years away.

Motions, including radial velocities and proper motion, have been measured for thousands of cluster stars. The radial velocities of open cluster stars are much smaller than those of globular clusters, averaging tens of kilometres per second, but their proper motions are larger. Open clusters share in the galactic rotation. Used with galactic-rotation formulas, the radial velocities provide another means of distance determination.

A few clusters are known as moving clusters because the convergence of the proper motions of their individual stars toward a “convergent point” is pronounced. The apparent convergence is caused by perspective: the cluster members are really moving as a swarm in almost parallel directions and with about the same speeds. The Hyades is the most-prominent example of a moving cluster. (The Hyades stars are converging with a velocity of 45 km/sec toward the point in the sky with position coordinates right ascension 94 arc degrees, declination +7.6 arc degrees.) The Ursa Major group, another moving cluster, occupies a volume of space containing the Sun, but the Sun is not a member. The cluster consists of a compact nucleus of 14 stars and an extended stream.

Stellar groups are composed of stars presumed to have been formed together in a batch, but the members are now too widely separated to be recognized as a cluster.

Of all the open clusters, the Pleiades is the best known and perhaps the most thoroughly studied. This cluster, with a diameter of 35 light-years at a distance of 440 light-years, is composed of about 500 stars and is 100 million years old. Near the Pleiades in the sky but not so conspicuous, the Hyades is the nearest cluster at 150 light-years. Its stars are similar to those in the solar neighbourhood, and it is an older cluster (about 615 million years in age). Measurements of the Hyades long formed a basis for astronomical determinations of distance and age because its thoroughly studied main sequence was used as a standard. The higher-than-usual metal abundance in its stars, however, complicated matters, and it is no longer favoured in this way. Coma Berenices, located 290 light-years away, is an example of a “poor” cluster, containing only about 40 stars. There are some extremely young open clusters. Of these, the one associated with the Orion Nebula, which is some 4 million years old, is the closest, at a distance of 1,400 light-years. A still younger cluster is NGC 6611, some of the stars in which formed only a few hundred thousand years ago. At the other end of the scale, some open clusters have ages approaching those of the globular clusters. M67 in the constellation Cancer is 4.5 billion years old, and NGC 188 in Cepheus is 6.5 billion years of age. The oldest known open cluster, Collinder 261 in the southern constellation of Musca, is 8.9 billion years old.