Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking new photo of NGC 330, an open star cluster that resides in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
This Hubble image shows the open star cluster NGC 330. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Kalirai / A. Milone.
Open clusters are large groups of stars weakly bound by gravity, all of which formed from the same molecular cloud.
“As star clusters form from a single primordial cloud of gas and dust, all the stars they contain are roughly the same age,” Hubble astronomers said.
“This makes them useful natural laboratories for astronomers to learn how stars form and evolve.”
The open cluster NGC 330 is located some 180,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Tucana.
It was discovered on August 1, 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop.
Also cataloged as ESO 29-24, Kron 35 and Lindsay 54, it contains a multitude of stars, many of which are scattered across the new Hubble image.
“This striking image uses observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, and incorporates data from two very different astronomical investigations,” the astronomers said.
“The first aimed to understand why stars in star clusters appear to evolve differently from stars elsewhere, a peculiarity first observed by Hubble.”
“The second aimed to determine how large stars can be before they become doomed to end their lives in cataclysmic supernova explosions.”
“The new image of NGC 330 also contains clues about the inner workings of Hubble itself,” they added.
“The criss-cross patterns surrounding the stars in this image — known as diffraction spikes — were created when starlight interacted with the four thin vanes supporting Hubble’s secondary mirror.”
