... September 21, 1999 . The Quintuplet Star Cluster . ... Explanation: Bright clusters of stars form and disperse near the center of our Galaxy . ... The Quintuplet Cluster is located within 100 light-years of the Galactic center , and is home to the brightest star yet cataloged in our Galaxy: the Pistol Star . ... The young Quintuplet Cluster is one of the most massive open clusters yet discovered, but still much less massive than the ancient globular clusters that orbit in the distant halo. ...

... Press Release Images . Individual Images . ... The right-hand image shows Hubble's close-up view of the galaxy's core, taken in December 1995 by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The bluish-purple clumps that form the ring are the clusters of infant stars. Two dark, wispy lanes of dust and a pair of blue spiral arms are just outside the star-forming ring. ... The gas is trapped inside the ring through the stars' gravitational attraction. ... Amazing Space | ...

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! ...

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. ...

... Commission 37: Star Clusters and Associations . Home Page . Commission 37 of the International Astronomical Union deals with all aspects of Globular Cluster, Open Cluster, and Stellar Associations research. With Commission 33 it forms Division VII of the IAU. Commission Structure . ... IAU Home Page . Open Clusters Database (maintained by J.-C. Mermilliod ) . Catalogue of Milky Way Globular Cluster Parameters (maintained by W. E. Harris ) . ...

... The Quintuplet Star Cluster . ... Bright clusters of stars form and disperse near the center of our Galaxy. ... The Quintuplet Cluster is located within 100 light-years of the Galactic center, and is home to the brightest star yet cataloged in our Galaxy: the Pistol Star. ... Visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion, this image taken with the Big Throughput Camera shows the Orion Nebula to be a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. ...