NASA's Hubble telescope captures glittering galaxy 200,000 light years away
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a star-studded image of a small region, in a dwarf galaxy called Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The highlight of the picture is an open star cluster known as NGC 376. It has a mass of about 3,400 times that of the Sun. SMC, which lies 200,000 light years from Earth, is one of the Milky Way's closest neighbors.
Why does this story matter?
Hubble's image depicts only a small fraction of SMC, which contains close to hundreds of millions of stars. SMC pairs with the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and both cosmic objects are best visible from the Southern Hemisphere. However, they can also be seen from certain Northern regions. Recently, Hubble captured a 'brilliant blue' star cluster in the constellation Mensa located in the LMC.
What's the difference between open and globular star clusters?
Open clusters are much smaller and more sparsely populated than globular clusters. They consist of young, loosely bound stars. Globular clusters are comparatively larger and the stars are tightly bound by gravitational forces. Their centers appear as a continuous blur of starlight because they are brimming with stars. Our own Milky Way galaxy is home to more than 150 globular star clusters.
How was the picture shot?
Even in the most densely populated sections of this image, individual stars can be distinguished in NGC 376 as it is an open cluster. The data from this image has been put together from two different investigations that were carried out using two Hubble instruments, namely the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
The second investigation threw light on the lives of stars
The first investigation, which used the ACS, probed into a handful of star clusters in the SMC and helped astronomers explore subjects, including the abundance of low- and high-mass stars in different environments. The second investigation relied on both the WFC3 and ACS and aimed to answer fundamental questions like precisely where, when, why, and how stars form.
