Tons of of stars sparkle towards the darkish backdrop of space in a brand new picture from the Hubble Space Telescope.
This glittering group of stars, referred to as NGC 2660, is situated 8,617 light-years from Earth within the constellation of Vela. NGC 2660 is classed as an open star cluster — a kind of star cluster that may comprise wherever from tens to a couple lots of of stars loosely sure collectively by gravity, in line with a NASA statement (opens in new tab).
“The celebs of open clusters kind out of the identical area of fuel and dust and thus share many traits, resembling age and chemical composition,” NASA officers stated within the assertion. “In contrast to globular clusters — their historical, denser, and extra tightly-packed cousins — open clusters are simpler to review since astronomers can extra simply distinguish between particular person stars.”
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The celebs of an open cluster can vary in age from just a few tens of hundreds of thousands or lots of of hundreds of thousands of years previous. Because the clusters are solely loosely sure by gravity, the celebrities might disperse after just a few million years into the encompassing spiral or irregular galaxies wherein they had been born, in line with the assertion.
The current Hubble picture, which NASA shared on Nov. 29, 2022, captures lots of of stars scattered throughout the constellation, which will be best viewed within the southern sky. The intense crimson object within the higher left of the picture is a foreground star that isn’t a part of the open star cluster.
Hubble noticed NGC 2660 as a part of a program to review the ages of white dwarf stars in open clusters. The celebs captured within the picture are surrounded by diffraction spikes, which happen when the brilliant mild from the celebrities displays off of the space telescope’s secondary mirror assist.
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