It is likely situated at the intersection of the northern end of the Long Bar of the Milky Way and the inner portion of the Scutum–Centaurus Arm—one of the two major spiral arms.

[4][2] Alternatively, a study around a similar timeframe gave a further distance of roughly 5.9 kiloparsecs (19,000 light-years).

[6] A similar kinematic distance of 5.5 kiloparsecs (18,000 light-years) was reported in a 2010 study, derived from the average radial velocity of four of the cluster's members (96 kilometers per second) and from an association with a clump of stars near Stephenson 2, Stephenson 2 SW, locating it near the Scutum–Centaurus Arm of the Milky Way.

A more recent study has identified around 80 red supergiants in the line of sight of Stephenson 2, approximately 40 of them with radial velocities consistent with being cluster members.

This grouping was first mentioned in Deguchi (2010) and was named Stephenson 2 SW because it lies south-west of the main cluster.