Star Clusters

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At center right is a compact star cluster composed of luminous red, blue, and white points of light. Faint jets with clumpy, diffuse material extend in various directions from the bright cluster. Above and to the right is a smaller cluster of stars. Translucent red wisps of material stretch across the scene, though there are patches and a noticeable gap in the top left corner that reveal the black background of space. Background galaxies are scattered across this swath of space, appearing as small blue-white and orange-white dots or fuzzy, thin disks. There are two noticeably larger points, foreground stars, with diffraction spikes: an orange-white point on the left, and a blue-white point in the top right.

NASA’s Webb Peers into the Extreme Outer Galaxy

5 min read

Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this…

Article3 months ago
A spherical collection of stars fills the image. The stars merge into a bright, bluish core at image center and form a sparse band around the core and out to the edges of the image. A few stars lie in front of the cluster, with visible diffraction spikes. The background is dark black.

Hubble Finds a Field of Stars

2 min read

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a globular cluster called NGC 1651. Like another recent globular cluster…

Article8 months ago
A cluster of stars. Most of the stars are very small and uniform in size, and they are notably bluish and cluster more densely together toward the center of the image. Some appear larger in the foreground. The stars give way to a dark background at the corners.

Hubble Uncovers a Celestial Fossil

2 min read

This densely populated group of stars is the globular cluster NGC 1841, which is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud…

Article9 months ago
Thousands of bright stars shine against black space, more tightly condensed near the image’s center. The stars glint in shades of white, blue, and red, and diffraction spikes are visible around the foreground stars.

Stars Sparkle in New Hubble Image

1 min read

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope view shows the globular cluster NGC 2298, a sparkling collection of thousands of stars…

Article10 months ago