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Credit & Copyright: S. Kohle,
T. Credner et al.
Explanation:
Many stars form in clusters. Two types of
star clusters are visible in our Milky Way Galaxy:
open clusters and globular clusters.
Open clusters like M50, shown above,
typically contain hundreds of stars,
many of which are bright, young, and blue. In fact, most of the
bright blue stars in the above picture belong to M50,
but most of the dimmer, red stars do not. M50 lies about 3000
light-years from Earth and is about
20 light years across. Open clusters
tend to have irregular shapes and are mostly found in the plane
of our Galaxy.
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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
Publications with words: open cluster
See also: