... Galactic or open star clusters are relatively young swarms of bright stars born together near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Separated by about a degree on the sky, two nice examples are M46 (upper left) 5,400 light-years in the distance and M47 (lower right) only 1,600 light-years away toward the nautical constellation Puppis . Around 300 million years young M46 contains a few hundred stars in a region about 30 light-years across. ... M7: Open Star Cluster in Scorpius . ...

Today's APOD | ... Editor's choices for the most educational Astronomy Pictures of the Day about open clusters: . APOD: 2006 January 9 - M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster . ... The Pleiades contains over 3000 stars, is about 400 light years away, and only 13 light years across. ... Two types of star clusters are visible in our Milky Way Galaxy : open clusters and globular clusters . ... Aged 80 million years, M47 is a smaller but looser cluster of about 50 stars spanning 10 light-years. ... Index | ...

Stellar Clusters are very useful laboratories for empirically studying stellar evolution. ... All cluster stars are at the same distance . All cluster stars have the same physical age . ... CM diagram Young Cluster In this case we see the Main Sequence fully represented. The blue dots represent massive stars with short main sequence lifetimes. ... Thus, identifying the most massive star which is still on the main sequence is an effective means of determining the age of a stellar cluster. ...

... 87.1083Owen+ VIII/29 1400-MHz Survey of 1478 Abell Clusters of Galaxies (Owen+ 1982) ================================================================================ A 1400-MHz Survey of 1478 Abell Clusters of Galaxies Owen F.N., White R.A., Hilldrup K.C., Hanisch R.J. =1982AJ.. ... 0,] Major axis error 70- 71 A2 --- n_MajAxi *[ A, B, C,NR, ] Major axis note 73- 74 I2 arcmin MinAxi *? ... Note on dist-C: Ratio of the distance of the source from the cluster center to the corrected Abell cluster...

... Kalirai and Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia led the study, which began as an investigation of a globular star cluster in the Milky Way galaxy known as NGC 6397. ... Within the population of stars and galaxies behind NGC 6397, the Hubble image revealed a large elliptical galaxy that contains several hundred globular clusters. ... In fact, a single giant star in NGC 6397 appears 10 million times brighter than one of the distant globular clusters. ...

... January 6, 1999 . M6: The Butterfly Cluster . ... Explanation: To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. ... Like other open clusters , M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars , although the brightest star is nearly orange. ... Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe. ... About APOD > . ... NASA Technical Rep.: ... A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC . ...

... In 1930, Trumpler noticed that linear diameters (LD) of open clusters increase with distance (D) from the Sun. ... Since that time, the interstellar absorption has become one of the best studied factor in astrophysics, and we may hope that current OCL distance scales are free from this LD-D correlation. To verify if this is the case we have chosen several modern OCL distance scales and test them with the same clusters and the same angular diameters that Trumpler had used back in 1930. ...

J/AstL/vol/page SAI Open Clusters Catalog (Glushkova+, 2009) ================================================================================ Automated search for star clusters in large multiband surveys. ... Color excesses E(B-V), distance moduli and ages were determined for 141 new and 27 known, but poorly studied clusters. We present the Sternberg Astronomical Institute Open Clusters Catalog (SAI OCL Catalog) of coordinates, diameters and main physical parameters of these clusters. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Comets and Asteroids . ... Image credit:ESO/J.Emerson/VISTA. ... However others are less pessimistic and it has even been claimed that the mysterious ?Wow! signal? received in 1977 originated from the direction M55.б  Sadly, this still unexplained pulse of radio energy originated from a location rather to the northwest of M55 so I doubt if the source was this cluster (if indeed the signal was genuinely of extraterrestrial origin). ... Mysterious Wow! ...

... The most powerful and widely used methods to calculate the scattering matrix of a fractal cluster are based on the coupled dipoles methods (e.g. the Discrete Dipole Approximation, DDA) and the theory of light scattering by a cluster of spherical particles [2-4]. ... At present the procedure of calculation of the scattering matrix is well developed for both an oriented cluster of spherical particles and for chaotically oriented clusters of such particles [4]. ...

... The overall globular cluster population is divided by gap in the metallicity function at [Fe/H]=-1.0 into two discrete groups with well-defined maxima at [Fe/H]=-1.60?0.03 dex, and -0.60?0.04 dex. ... Clusters with extremely blue horizontal branches occupy a spherical volume of radius ~ 9 kpc, have high rotational velocities ( V rot =77?33 km/s), have substantial and equal negative radial and vertical metallicity gradients, and are, on average, the oldest group (the old-halo subsystem). ...

.

... Gravitational wave search provides insights into galaxy evolution and mergers . ... galaxies . ... Globular cluster NGC 2808, elliptical galaxy NGC 2986, and the Sextans Dwarf . ... Open cluster NGC 2818, spiral galaxy NGC 2964, and spiral galaxy NGC 2976 . ... What are typical star-to-star distances in globular clusters compared to stellar distances in our region of the galaxy? ... RELATED TOPICS: GLOBULAR CLUSTERS . ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ...

... LMC Project Outline . NGC 1818 Initial Results . ... The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is uniquely suitable for the study of massive star clusters at all stages of evolution. By combining HST observations of these clusters with N-body models we hope to understand the origin and evolution of rich star clusters in our own Galaxy, in the LMC, and beyond. ... We aim to combine our HST observations with N-body models to understand the formation and evolution of globular clusters. ...

home publications > mercury . ... Big Clusters, Tiny Galaxies . ... Astronomers struggle to understand why giant star clusters form in the tiniest of galaxies . ... These clusters are probably young versions of globular clusters, but they are commonly called super star clusters. Seven dwarf galaxies within 16 million light-years have formed super star clusters, with one of these galaxies, NGC 1569, possessing two young clusters. ... Super star clusters have a lot to tell us about star formation. ...

... Primordial theory review : Dick Bond . Defects and the CMB review : Andy Albrecht . ... Gravitational wave contribution to CMB anisotropies : V.B. Lukash and E.V. Mikheeva . C_l from cosmic strings : Lloyd Knox . Some aspects of CMB anisotropies induced from topological defects : Mairi Sakellariadou . ... CMB anisotropies from scaling sources : Ruth Durrer . ... SZ observations I : Sarah Church . ... Holes in the microwave sky? ... Detecting cosmic strings in the CMB : James Robinson . ...

IC 348 1 IC 348 IC 348 Hubble image of IC 348 and its surroundings.[ ... References External links · Amateur photography ( http ://www.photonhunter.at/IC348.html) Article Sources and Contributors 2 Article Sources and Contributors IC 348 Source: http ://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=549545123 Contributors : Jmencisom, PatrickHochleitner, RJHall Image Sources , Licenses and Contributors File:Hubble image of LRLL 54361 and its surroundings.tif Source: ...

ABSOLUTE PROPER MOTIONS OF 331 OPEN CLUSTERS . ... The proper motions of stars in the fields of 331 open clusters were taken from Four-Million Star Catalog (4M-catalog) of positions and proper motions (Volchkov et al. ... The absolute proper motions for 21 young open clusters have been derived by comparison of precise relative proper motions of individual stars and their corresponding absolute proper motions. ... Sign of proper motions in RA . ... 0.0001 arcsec/yr . ... rms error in RA proper motion . ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... The next step up are true clusters, called open clusters . Open clusters (sometimes misleadingly called "galactic clusters") are groups of stars ranging in size from a few dozen stars up to tens of thousands. ... The youngest is about 1 or 2 million years old, while the oldest is about 6 or 7 billion years, making it just older than our own solar system. ... So by looking at the stars in the cluster we can tell pretty well how old they are. ...

... Posts tagged ?clusters? Apr 27th, 2008| 11:29 am | ... The last paper in the list discusses MCMC for time series analysis, applied to sunspot data. ... ArXiv] 4th week, Apr. ... ArXiv] 3rd week, Apr. ... Entries RSS . ... Algorithms arXiv Astro Bad AstroStat Bayesian CHASC Cross-Cultural Data Processing Fitting Frequentist Galaxies gamma-ray High-Energy Imaging Jargon Job Languages MC MCMC Meta Methods Misc News Nuggets Objects Optical Physics Quotes Spectral Stars Stat Timing Uncertainty X-ray . ...