Appearances can be deceptive

Esahubble_potw1303a_1024

esahubble_potw1303a January 21st, 2013

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA 

Globular clusters are roughly spherical collections of extremely old stars, and around 150 of them are scattered around our galaxy. Hubble is one of the best telescopes for studying these, as its extremely high resolution lets astronomers see individual stars, even in the crowded core. The clusters all look very similar, and in Hubbles images it can be quite hard to tell them apart and they all look much like NGC 411, pictured here. And yet appearances can be deceptive: NGC 411 is in fact not a globular cluster, and its stars are not old. It isnt even in the Milky Way. NGC 411 is classified as an open cluster. Less tightly bound than a globular cluster, the stars in open clusters tend to drift apart over time as they age, whereas globulars have survived for well over 10 billion years of galactic history. NGC 411 is a relative youngster not much more than a tenth of this age. Far from being a relic of the early years of the Universe, the stars in NGC 411 are in fact a fraction of the age of the Sun. The stars in NGC 411 are all roughly the same age, having formed in one go from one cloud of gas. But they are not all the same size. Hubbles image shows a wide range of colours and brightnesses in the clusters stars. These tell astronomers many facts about the stars, including their mass, temperature and evolutionary phase. Blue stars, for instance, have higher surface temperatures than red ones. The image is a composite produced from ultraviolet, visible and infrared observations made by Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3. This filter set lets the telescope see colours slightly further beyond red and the violet ends of the spectrum.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1303a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
NGC 411
Subject - Local Universe
Star > Grouping > Cluster > Open
Esahubble_potw1303a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 1h 7m 55.3s
DEC = -71° 45’ 55.3”
Orientation
North is 178.2° CW
Field of View
2.4 x 1.8 arcminutes
Constellation
Tucana

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red Hubble (WFC3) Infrared (I) 814.0 nm
Green Hubble (WFC3) Optical (B) 475.0 nm
Blue Hubble (WFC3) Ultraviolet (U) 336.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Red
Green
Blue
Esahubble_potw1303a_1280
×
ID
potw1303a
Subject Category
C.3.6.4.1  
Subject Name
NGC 411
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA 
Release Date
2013-01-21T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1303a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
NED distance to SMC
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
WFC3, WFC3, WFC3
Color Assignment
Red, Green, Blue
Band
Infrared, Optical, Ultraviolet
Bandpass
I, B, U
Central Wavelength
814, 475, 336
Start Time
Integration Time
1980, 1520, 2200
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
16.9802405001, -71.7653610655
Reference Dimension
3675.0, 2756.0
Reference Pixel
1837.0, 1378.0
Scale
-1.09939593914e-05, 1.09939593914e-05
Rotation
-178.16000000000003
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1303a
Metadata Date
2012-12-04T09:49:45+01:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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