Video Credit: NASA
Sonification: Pismis 24
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Tag Archives: Star Cluster
Finding a Black Hole
Video Credit: ESO
Messier 80
This is Messier object M80. I posted it today because there isn’t a Cherry Bomb nebula.
Image Credit: NASA
A Big Cluster of Stars Near the Galactic Center
This star cluster lurks less than 100 light-years from the very center of our galaxy. With an equivalent mass greater than 10,000 stars like our Sun, the monster cluster is 10 times larger than a typical young star clusters found in the Milky Way. This cluster is destined to be ripped apart in just a few million years by gravitational tidal forces in the galaxy’s core, but during its brief lifespan, it will shine more brightly than almost every other star cluster in the galaxy.
Image Credit: NASA
NGC 3603
NGC 3603 is an open cluster of stars situated in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way around 20,000 light-years away from the Solar System. It’s the densest concentration of very massive stars known in the galaxy, and their strong ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds have cleared the gas and dust, giving an unobscured view of the cluster.
Image Credit: ESO
Westerlund 1
This is a young super star cluster known as Westerlund 1. It’s the home of one of the largest stars yet found. Westerlund 1-26 is a red supergiant with a radius over 1,500 times that of our sun. Indeed, it’s sometimes referred to as a hypergiant star. If Westerlund 1-26 were at the center of our solar system, it would extend out beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
The Westerlund 1 cluster is relatively young in astronomical terms, around three million years old. The Sun is around 4.6 billion years old.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA
A Stellar Nursery
These swirls of gas and dust and the stars clustered in and around them are know as LH 95. It a region of low-mass, infant stars and their much more massive stellar neighbors found in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The largest stars in LH 95 (those with at least 3X the mass of the Sun) generate strong stellar winds and high levels of UV radiation that heat the surrounding interstellar gas. The result is a bluish nebula of glowing hydrogen expanding outward into the molecular cloud that originally collapsed to form these massive stars. However, some dense parts of this star-forming region remain intact despite the stellar winds. The appear as dark dusty filaments in the picture. These dust lanes absorb some of the blue light emitted by the stars behind them causing them appear redder. Other parts of the molecular cloud have contracted to form infant stars, the fainter of which have a high tendency to cluster.
Image Credit: NASA
Trumpler 14
This glittering star cluster that contains some of the brightest stars our galaxy. Trumpler 14 is located 8,000 light-years away in a large star-formation region called the Carina Nebula. Because the cluster is relatively young, only 500,000 years old, it has one of the highest concentrations of massive, luminous stars in the entire Milky Way.
The dark spot left of center is a blob of gas and dust seen in silhouette.
Image Credit: NASA / ESA
An Old Star Cluster
This is NGC 6535, a globular cluster 22,000 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent). It’s about one light-year across.
Globular clusters are tightly bound groups of stars which orbit galaxies. The Latin word globulus, from which these clusters take their name, means a small sphere. A large mass in the rich stellar centre of a globular cluster pulls the stars inward to form a ball of stars.
Globular clusters are generally very ancient objects that form around the same time as their host galaxy. Thus far, no new star formation has been observed within amy globular cluster. The lack of young stars explains the abundance of aging yellow stars in this image, most of them containing very few heavy elements.
Image Credit: NASA
A Superbubble
This superbubble is the nebula LHA 120-N 44 surrounding the star cluster NGC 1929 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. The superbubble is expanding outwards from the cluster of young stars at its center as their radiation sculpts the nebula’s evolution.
Image Credit: ESO
A Stellar Nursery
These swirls of gas and dust and the stars clustered in and around them are know as LH 95. It a region of low-mass, infant stars and their much more massive stellar neighbors found in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The largest stars in LH 95 (those with at least 3X the mass of the Sun) generate strong stellar winds and high levels of UV radiation that heat the surrounding interstellar gas. The result is a bluish nebula of glowing hydrogen expanding outward into the molecular cloud that originally collapsed to form these massive stars. However, some dense parts of this star-forming region remain intact despite the stellar winds. The appear as dark dusty filaments in the picture. These dust lanes absorb some of the blue light emitted by the stars behind them causing them appear redder. Other parts of the molecular cloud have contracted to form infant stars, the fainter of which have a high tendency to cluster.
Image Credit: NASA
A Massive Star Cluster
This star cluster lurks less than 100 light-years from the very center of our galaxy. With an equivalent mass greater than 10,000 stars like our Sun, the monster cluster is 10 times larger than a typical young star clusters found in the Milky Way. This cluster is destined to be ripped apart in just a few million years by gravitational tidal forces in the galaxy’s core, but during its brief lifespan, it will shine more brightly than almost every other star cluster in the galaxy.
Image Credit: NASA