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Credit & Copyright: Anglo-Australian Telescope
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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. NGC 3293 appears just in front dense dust lane emanating from the
Carina Nebula.
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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