... Editor's choices for the most educational Astronomy Pictures of the Day about clusters of galaxies: . APOD: 2006 March 21 - The Coma Cluster of Galaxies . ... APOD: 2005 November 22 - A Galactic Collision in Cluster Abell 1185 . ... A prominent example occurs on the left of the above image of the rich cluster of galaxies Abell 1185. ... Recent observations of Abell 1185 have found unusual globular clusters of stars that appear to belong only to the galaxy cluster and not to any individual galaxy. ...

... Credit: D. F. Malin , AAO Explanation: Many stars like our Sun were formed in open clusters. The above open cluster, M11 , contains thousands of stars and is just over three thousand light years distant. ... Open clusters , also called galactic clusters, contain fewer and younger stars than globular clusters. ... Publications with keywords: cluster - M1 - M11 - open cluster . Publications with words: cluster - M1 - M11 - open cluster . ... M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster . ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... Last week's Snack talked about how black holes can affect the environment around them in such a way as to be very bright . ... It's a common misconception that black holes always have matter swirling into them. ... As this matter gets closer and closer to the black hole it piles up and a large, fairly flat disk forms. This is called the accretion disk , because matter from this disk accretes (that is, falls in) on the black hole. ... 2008 Phil Plait. ...

... The ball of stars at the centre of this photograph is unbelievably old. ... This group of stars, called a globular cluster, is actually 10 billion years old that's almost as old as the universe itself! Globular clusters contain tens of thousands of ancient stars that all formed around the same time, from the same material. But strangely, these clusters sometimes contain stars that look suspiciously young, raising the question: are these clusters really the ancient relics that we believe? ...

... 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. ...

... STScI-PRC99-26 HUBBLE IMAGES A SWARM OF ANCIENT STARS This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. ... By analyzing the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images, including images taken through an ultraviolet filter, astronomers have found a large population of "blue stragglers" in the core of the cluster. These stars appear to be unusually young and more massive than the other stars in a globular cluster. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Stars . ... Starbursts are short-lived events, stars are forming so quickly that the reservoirs of interstellar gas from which stars are coalescing would be used up on a timescale much shorter than the age of the galaxy . ... Strong stellar winds from giant new stars in the starburst region combine with the blasts of supernovae to push a mighty flood of extremely hot gas, a ?superwind? from the galaxy thousands of light years into intergalactic space. ...

... All previous such superstars have been found along with many companion stars in the centres of crowded star clusters. The star is known as VFTS 682 from the VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey catalogue of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) located at Paranal in Chile by means of the attached FLAMES instrument. ... Although VFTS 682 seems to be alone now it is not very far away from a very rich star cluster known as RMC 136 that contains several similar superstars. ...

... The Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is a conspicuous object in the night sky with a prominent place in ancient mythology . ... The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them 1/50th the age of our sun, and they lie some 130 parsecs (425 light years ) away. ... Data for these stars are listed in a table below. ... Yes . ... WEBDA Pleiades cluster data . ... M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster (2007 November 18) ...

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. ...

... BLUE STRAGGLER STARS are unusually hot and bright stars found in the cores of ancient star clusters known as globulars. ... BACKGROUND (from wikipedia): Blue straggler stars are stars in open or globular clusters that are hotter and bluer than other cluster stars having the same luminosity. ... There is evidence in favor of this view, notably that blue straggler stars appear to be much more common in dense regions of clusters, especially in the cores of globular clusters. ...

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