Right Ascension	23 : 24.2 (h:m)
Declination	+61 : 35 (deg:m)
Distance	5.0 (kly)
Visual Brightness	7.3 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	13.0 (arc min)
Discovered by	Charles Messier Sept 7th, 1774

M52 is a fine open cluster located in a rich Milky Way field. 

The brightest main sequence star of this cluster is of mag 11.0 and spectral type B7. Two yellow giants are brighter: The brightest is of spectral type F9 and mag 7.77, the other of type G8 and mag 8.22. The Sky Catalog 2000 gives an age of only 35 million years, which coincides with the value given by Woldemar Götz, who mentions that this cluster contains one peculiar Of star, i.e. an extremely hot star with peculiar spectral lines of ionized helium and nitrogene.

The distance of this cluster is not very well known; given from 3,000 to 7,000 ly. This uncertainty is mainly due to the high interstellar absorption its light has suffered on its way to us, which is complicated to estimate reasonably. M52 is classified as of Trumpler type I,2,r (Sky Catalog 2000) or II,2,r (Glyn Jones, Götz).