The Hubble team has released a striking new photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the open cluster NGC 346, which resides in one of our Milky Way Galaxy’s closest neighbors.
This Hubble image shows NGC 346, an open star cluster some 210,000 light-years in the constellation of Tucana. Image credit: NASA / ESA / C. Murray, Space Telescope Science Institute / Gladys Kober, NASA & Catholic University of America.
NGC 346 is located in the constellation of Tucana at a distance of roughly 210,000 light-years.
Also known as ESO 51-10, Kron 39 or Lindsay 60, this cluster was discovered on August 1, 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop.
NGC 346 is part of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is a satellite of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The cluster is around 3 million years old, has a diameter of 150 light-years and a mass of 50,000 solar masses.
“NGC 346’s hot stars unleash a torrent of radiation and energetic outflows, which erode the denser portions of gas and dust in the surrounding nebula, N66,” the Hubble astronomers wrote in a statement.
“Dozens of hot, blue, and high-mass stars shine within NGC 346, and we believe this cluster contains more than half of the known high-mass stars in the whole Small Magellanic Cloud.”
Hubble has observed NGC 346 before, but its new view shows the cluster in ultraviolet light, along with some visible-light data.
“Ultraviolet light helps us understand more about star formation and evolution, and Hubble — with its combined sharp resolution and position above our UV-blocking atmosphere — is the only telescope with the ability to make sensitive, ultraviolet observations,” the astronomers wrote.
“These specific observations were gathered to learn more about how star formation shapes the interstellar medium, which is the gas distributed throughout seemingly empty space, in a low-metallicity galaxy like the Small Magellanic Cloud.”
“We call elements heavier than hydrogen and helium ‘metals,’ and the Small Magellanic Cloud contains fewer metals when compared to most parts of our Milky Way.”
“This condition helps make it an excellent example of a galaxy similar to those that existed in our early Universe, when very few heavy elements were around to incorporate.”
Source : Breaking Science News