Different generations

Esahubble_potw1847a_1024

esahubble_potw1847a November 19th, 2018

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Star clusters are common structures throughout the Universe, each made up of hundreds of thousands of stars all bound together by gravity. This star-filled image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopes Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows one of them: NGC 1866. NGC 1866 is found at the very edges of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy located near to the Milky Way. The cluster was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, who catalogued thousands of stars and deep-sky objects during his career. However, NGC 1866 is no ordinary cluster. It is a surprisingly young globular cluster situated close enough to us that its stars can be studied individually no mean feat given the mammoth distances involved in studying the cosmos! There is still debate over how globular clusters form, but observations such as this have revealed that most of their stars are old and have a low metallicity. In astronomy, metals are any elements other than hydrogen and helium; since stars form heavier elements within their core as they carry out nuclear fusion throughout their lifetimes, a low metallicity indicates that a star is very old, as the material from which it formed was not enriched with many heavy elements. Its possible that the stars within globular clusters are so old that they were actually some of the very first to form after the Big Bang. In the case of NGC 1866, though, not all stars are the same. Different populations, or generations, of stars are thought to coexist within the cluster. Once the first generation of stars formed, the cluster may have encountered a giant gas cloud that sparked a new wave of star formation and gave rise to a second, younger, generation of stars explaining why it seems surprisingly youthful.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1847a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, None, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
NGC 1866
Subject - Milky Way
Star > Grouping > Cluster > Globular
Esahubble_potw1847a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 5h 13m 38.6s
DEC = -65° 27’ 53.0”
Orientation
North is 141.0° CCW
Field of View
2.7 x 2.6 arcminutes
Constellation
Dorado

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red Hubble (WFC3) Optical (I) 814.0 nm
Green Hubble (WFC3) Optical (V) 555.0 nm
Cyan Hubble (WFC3) Optical (B`) 438.0 nm
Blue Hubble (WFC3) Optical (NeV) 343.0 nm
Blue Hubble (WFC3) Optical (U) 336.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Red
Green
Cyan
Blue
Blue
Esahubble_potw1847a_1280
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ID
potw1847a
Subject Category
B.3.6.4.2  
Subject Name
NGC 1866
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release Date
2018-11-19T06:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1847a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
WFC3, WFC3, WFC3, WFC3, WFC3
Color Assignment
Red, Green, Cyan, Blue, Blue
Band
Optical, Optical, Optical, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
I, V, B`, NeV, U
Central Wavelength
814, 555, 438, 343, 336
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
None, None, None, None, None
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
78.4108476823, -65.4647222538
Reference Dimension
4073.0, 3965.0
Reference Pixel
2036.5, 1982.5
Scale
-1.10089773762e-05, 1.10089773762e-05
Rotation
140.98000000000002
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
None
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1847a
Metadata Date
2018-11-15T15:22:06+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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