This star cluster has the not very romantic name R136, but it's located in the more colorfully named Tarantula nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The nebula is extremely bright; if it were as close to Earth as the Orion nebula, it would allegedly cast shadows, and much of its luminosity stems from this star cluster. You can tell from their bright blue color that these are young, huge, very very hot stars.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
No comments:
Post a Comment