We review the properties of the very young ( \sim 2 Myr ) open cluster NGC 6383 . The cluster is dominated by the massive binary HD 159176 ( O7 V + O7 V ) . The distance to NGC 6383 is consistently found to be 1.3 \pm 0.1 kpc and the average reddening is determined to be E ( \hbox { $B - V$ } ) = 0.32 \pm 0.02 . Several pre-main sequence candidates have been identified using different criteria relying on the detection of emission lines , infrared excesses , photometric variability and X-ray emission .