NGC 3293: A Bright Young Open Cluster
23.08.1996

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.

N81: Star Cradle in the SMC
5.10.2000

This dramatic Hubble Space Telescope image captures the birth of a cluster of massive stars. The newborn stars are seen just as they emerge from their natal nebula. Only 12 light-years across, the nebula...

NGC 3603: X-Rays From A Starburst Cluster
23.01.2001

A mere 20,000 light-years from the Sun lies the NGC 3603 star cluster, a resident of the nearby Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Seen here in this recent false-color x-ray...

Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri
23.08.2019

Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter.

Blue Stragglers In NGC 6397
22.06.2000

In our neck of the Galaxy stars are too far apart to be in danger of colliding, but in the dense cores of globular star clusters star collisions may be relatively common. In fact...

Blue Stragglers in NGC 6397
8.08.2003

In our neck of the Galaxy stars are too far apart to be in danger of colliding, but in the dense cores of globular star clusters star collisions may be relatively common. In fact...

APOD: 2025 July 19 Б Messier 6
18.07.2025

The sixth object in Charles Messier's famous catalog of things which are not comets, Messier 6 is a galactic or open star cluster. A gathering of 100 stars or so, all around 100 million years young, M6 lies some 1,600 light-years away toward the central Milky Way in the constellation Scorpius.

NGC 281: Cluster, Clouds, and Globules
20.10.2004

NGC 281 is a busy workshop of star formation. Prominent features include a small open cluster of stars, a diffuse red-glowing emission nebula, large lanes of obscuring gas and dust, and dense knots of dust and gas in which stars may still be forming.

Pleiades to Hyades
5.12.2019

This cosmic vista stretches almost 20 degrees from top to bottom, across the dusty constellation Taurus. It begins at the Pleiades and ends at the Hyades, two star clusters recognized since antiquity in Earth's night sky. At top, the compact Pleiades star cluster is about 400 light-years away.

A Giant Globular Cluster in M31
17.10.1998

This cluster of stars, known as G1, is the brightest globular cluster in the whole Local Group of galaxies. Also called Mayall II, it orbits the center of the largest nearby galaxy: M31. G1 contains over 300,000 stars and is almost as old as the entire universe.