Explanation: These two clusters of bright, newly formed stars surrounded by a glowing nebula lie 10 million light-years away in the dim, irregular galaxy cataloged as NGC 2366. The Hubble Space Telescope image shows that the youngest cluster, the bottom one at about 2 million years old, is still surrounded by the gas and dust cloud it condensed from, while powerful stellar winds from the stars in the older cluster at the top (4-5 million years old), have begun to clear away its central areas giving the entire nebula an apparent inverted hook shape. Compared to the sun, the stars in these clusters are massive and short lived. The brightest one, near the tip of the hook, is a rare Luminous Blue Variable with 30 to 60 times the mass of the sun - similar to the erruptive Eta Carinae in our own Milky Way. Stars this massive are extremely variable. A comparison with ground based images indicates that in three years this star's brightness increased by about 40 times making it currently the brightest star in this dim galaxy.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
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& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: star cluster - Eta Carinae - NGC 2363 - irregular galaxy - star formation - massive stars
Publications with words: star cluster - Eta Carinae - NGC 2363 - irregular galaxy - star formation - massive stars
See also:
- The Great Carina Nebula
- NGC 1893 and the Tadpoles of IC 410
- APOD: 2024 January 15 Á Star Cluster IC 348 from Webb
- APOD: 2023 December 10 Á Big Dipper over Pyramid Mountain
- Star Factory Messier 17
- APOD: 2023 August 28 Á Star Formation in the Pacman Nebula
- APOD: 2023 July 10 Á Stars, Dust and Nebula in NGC 6559