NGC 3114 has first been subject of studies in 1963, when Jankowitz and McCosh obtained photographic
UBV photometry for 171 of its stars and photoelectric UBV photometry of 52 stars. They estimated the
cluster to be 910
parsecs from the
Sun, its mean
visual extinction E(B-V) = 0.27 and its age to range from 6\times 10^{7} and 2\times 10^{8} years. In 1988, Schneider and Weiss obtained
photometry data for 122 stars, revising the cluster
reddening to be E(B-V) = 0.03. Three years later, Sagar and Sharpless made the largest data recording of the cluster to date, obtaining BV
CCD photometry of around 350 stars from seven 3.6'×5.4' regions. Because these regions were rather far from the cluster centre, a substantial contamination was expected. Nevertheless, by assuming the cluster reddening value obtained by Schneider and Weiss, they found the cluster to be 940 \pm 60 pc, which agreed with the measurements taken 28 years previously by Jankowitz and McCosh. They also found the age of the cluster to be 1-2 \times 10^{8} years. Finally, in 1989 Claria' et al. estimated the cluster
chemical abundance, finding that NGC 3114 has basically the same
metal richness as the Sun, for which [Fe/H] = -0.04\pm0.04 (Fe -
Iron, H -
Hydrogen). ==Gallery==