恒星珠宝盒：疏散星团NGC 290

2019 October 13

A Stellar Jewel Box: Open Cluster NGC 290
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Acknowledgement: E. Olzewski (U. Arizona)

Explanation: Jewels don’t shine this bright — only stars do. Like gems in a jewel box, though, the stars of open cluster NGC 290 glitter in a beautiful display of brightness and color. The photogenic cluster, pictured here, was captured in 2006 by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Open clusters of stars are younger, contain few stars, and contain a much higher fraction of blue stars than do globular clusters of stars. NGC 290 lies about 200,000 light-years distant in a neighboring galaxy called the Small Cloud of Magellan (SMC). The open cluster contains hundreds of stars and spans about 65 light years across. NGC 290 and other open clusters are good laboratories for studying how stars of different masses evolve, since all the open cluster’s stars were born at about the same time.

恒星珠宝盒：疏散星团NGC 290
影像提供: NASA, ESA, Hubble; 志谢: E. Olzewski (U. Arizona)

说明: 珠宝没这么明亮，只有恒星如斯。类似珠宝盒里的珍宝，疏散星团NGC 290内的恒星，美丽的展现各种明亮不一的色彩。上图中这个很上镜头的星团，是由哈伯太空望远镜摄于2006年。星团内恒星寥寥，然而和球状星团相较，成员星较年轻，并且蓝色恒星的比率远胜。 NGC 290位在邻近的小麦哲伦星系内，离我们约有20万光年远。这个疏散星团的数百颗成员星，挤在约65光年的范围内。在NGC 290及其他疏散星团之内，成员星大约都是同时诞生的，因此是研究不同质量恒星如何演化的上佳实验室。