August 6, 2014 Lupus 3, a dark cloud in Scorpius Image Credit: ESO/F. Comeron Lupus 3 is a dark, star-forming cloud with an associated cluster of brilliant stars, located about 600 light-years from Earth within our Milky Way Galaxy in the southern constellation of Scorpius (the Scorpion). The section shown here is about five light-years [continue reading]
July 10, 2014 NGC 411, an open star cluster in the SMC Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA NGC 411 is a small open star cluster of about 1.5 billion years old in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf companion galaxy to our Milky Way, which is located some 200,000 light-years away from Earth [continue reading]
May 4, 2014 NGC 6604, an open star cluster in Serpens Cauda Image Credit: ESO NGC 6604 (the bright grouping of stars towards to the upper left of this image) is a very young open star cluster with an age of some 4-5 million years in the star-forming (H II) region Sh2-54, located about 5,540 [continue reading]
April 5, 2014 The Dragonfish Nebula, an emission nebula in the Crux Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Toronto The Dragonfish Nebula, named for its resemblance to a terrifyingly toothy deep-sea fish on infrared images, is an emission nebula and star-forming region of about of 450 light-years across, located some 30,000 light-years away from Earth in [continue reading]
March 8, 2013 Messier 53, a bright globular cluster in Coma Berenices Image Credit: NASA/STScI/WikiSky Messier 53 (also known as NGC 5024) is a very bright globular cluster of roughly 220 light-years across, located about 58,000 light-years away from Earth in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair), and some 60,000 light-years away from [continue reading]
January 4, 2014 Messier 69, a globular cluster in Sagittarius Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Messier 69 (also known as NGC 6637) is a globular cluster of roughly 85 light-years across, with an estimated mass of 300,000 solar masses and an age of 13.06 billion years. It is located some 29,700 light-years away from Earth [continue reading]