... 2004 October 12 . M3: Inconstant Star Cluster . ... Explanation: Star clusters appear constant because photographs of them are frozen in time. In reality, though, cluster stars swarm the center and frequently fluctuate in brightness. ... In fact, the above time lapse movie of bright globular cluster M3 was taken over a single night. Most of the variable stars visible above are RR Lyrae stars , stars that can quickly double their brightness while becoming noticeably bluer. ... About APOD | ...

... 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 . ...

... October 18, 1999 . NGC 3603: An Active Star Cluster . ... Explanation: NGC 3603 is home to a massive star cluster, thick dust pillars, and a star about to explode . The central open cluster contains about 2000 bright stars, each of which is much brighter and more massive than our Sun . ... These stars are less massive than our Sun, demonstrating that great numbers of low-mass stars also form in active starburst regions . ... About APOD > . ...

... 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. ...

... 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? ...

... 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. ...

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! ...

... 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...

... 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. ...

Supernova 2009js in NGC 918 . This page is devoted to information on Supernova 2009js in NGC 918 . Basic information on this SN, including the last reported brightness, on this Supernova can be found on the main page . Information on the original web pages for many of these images can be found on the updates and links web pages. Discovered independently by Lick Observatory Supernova Search (USA) and Koichi Itagaki (Japan). ... 2009/10/11.44 . 17.2 . ... Joseph Brimacombe . ...

... This program was created for correlating chosen regions in the series of fts images. ... Chosen regions' . ... In this section the program counts the integral for each region of the grid for each image. ... As a matter of fact, the integral is total brightness of the region and it is counted by 'int_tabulated' IDL function. ... In addition, the program will show the count of the regions which correlate with the corresponding region (the brighter region means the bigger count) and its contour. ...

Results from 6m telescope observations of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies Sharina M. We consider properties of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies observed with the multi-slit unit of the SCORPIO spectrograph at the SAO 6m telescope. ... Studying GCs in dwarf galaxies at the faintest end of the galaxy luminosity function provides valuable information for a better understanding of galaxy evolution and evolutionary connection between globular clusters and nuclei of galaxies. ...

... 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. ...

... This paper ( Burke et al. 2003 ) describes the creation of one such catalogue - the Southern Serendipitous High-redshift Archival ROSAT Cluster (SHARC) survey - which covers an area of 17.7 deg 2 and consists of 32 clusters with redshifts between 0.05 and 0.7 and X-ray luminosities between 7 x 10 42 and 4 x 10 44 erg/s: the high-redshift subsample contains 16 clusters with = 0.3 and X-ray luminosities greater than 2 x 10 43 erg/s (luminosities are quoted for the 0.5 - 2.0 keV energy band). ... 1997 ...

... 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. ...

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. ...

Astronomy Articles . Articles | ... Moon | ... Astronomy Binoculars - The Skies The Limit - by Scott Gray, September 2006 . ... Astronomy Terms - To Help You Study The Universe - by Scott Gray, October 2006 . ... Himalia is the only moon other than Europa, Ganymeade, Callisto and IO visible with small telescopes. ... The Harvest Moon refers to the Full Moon that comes closest to the autumnal equinox, or the first day of autumn. ... Think the study of stars is best left to professional astronomers? ...

This long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image of massive galaxy cluster Abell 2744 is the deepest ever made of any cluster of galaxies. ... It contains several hundred galaxies as they looked 3.5 billion years ago. The immense gravity in Abell 2744 acts as a gravitational lens to warp space and brighten and magnify images of nearly 3,000 distant background galaxies. The more distant galaxies appear as they did longer than 12 billion years ago, not long after the Big Bang. ...