Credit: NASA, ESA, and T. von Hippel (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University); Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
This glittering group of stars, shining by means of the darkness like sparks left behind by a firework, is NGC 2660 within the constellation Vela, finest considered within the southern sky. NGC 2660 is an open cluster, a kind of star cluster that may include anyplace from tens to some a whole bunch of stars loosely certain collectively by gravity.
The stars of open clusters type out of the identical area of fuel and mud and thus share many traits, corresponding to age and chemical composition. Unlike globular clusters—their historic, denser, and extra tightly-packed cousins—open clusters are simpler to check since astronomers can extra simply distinguish between particular person stars. Their stars might be outdated or younger, and so they could disperse after just a few million years into the spiral or irregular galaxies the place they’re born.
The spikes surrounding lots of the stars on this picture are “diffraction spikes,” which happen when the glow from vivid factors of sunshine displays off of Hubble’s secondary mirror help. The vivid pink object to the left with the very distinguished diffraction spikes is a foreground star that’s not a part of the cluster. Hubble noticed this open cluster as a part of a program to check the ages of white dwarf stars in open clusters.
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NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Citation:
Image: Hubble Telescope spies glowing spray of stars in NGC 2660 (2022, November 29)
retrieved 30 November 2022
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