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Credit & Copyright: ESO/G. Beccari
Explanation:
Hot blue stars
shine brightly in this beautiful, recently formed galactic or
"open" star cluster.
Open cluster
NGC 3293 is located in the
constellation Carina, lies at a distance of about 8000
light years, and has a particularly high abundance of
these young bright stars.
A study of
NGC 3293
implies that the blue stars are only about 6 million years old, whereas the
cluster's dimmer, redder stars appear to be
about 20 million years old.
If true, star formation in this
open cluster
took at least 15 million years.
Even this amount of time is short, however,
when compared with the billions of years stars like our
Sun live,
and the over-ten billion year lifetimes of many
galaxies and our
universe.
Pictured,
NGC 3293 appears just in front of a dense
dust lane
and red glowing hydrogen gas emanating from the
Carina Nebula.
Astrophysicists:
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: open cluster - star cluster
Publications with words: open cluster - star cluster
See also: