NOAO's gallery of Star Clusters

NOAO's gallery of Star-Forming Nebulae

Open star cluster NGC 2266 (1 billion years old) in Gemini

Open star clusters M46 (top left, 300 million years) and M47 (bottom right, 80 million years)

Open star cluster M7 (200 million years) in Scorpio

The Pleiades, M45 (100 million years old)

The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237), glowing in the pink light of H\(\alpha\), surrounds a young star cluster NGC 2244 (a few million years old)

The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is about 5° × 5° on the sky. The young star \(\rho\) Ophiuchi is the blue star at right. The red giant Antares is the bright star at top left. The young star \(\sigma\) Scorpii powers the pink H\(\alpha\) nebula at bottom. The globular cluster M4 is visible at lower left.

The \(\rho\) Ophiuchi cloud complex

Wide field

The “Pillars of Creation” (2 million years old)

Visible (Hubble)	Near infra-red (Hubble)

The pillars are inside M16, the Eagle nebula

Jets of gas from young stars show movement over 20 years
1995	2014

Interstellar dust glows in the infrared (Herschel) Blue = 40 K, Red = 10K.

NGC 3603 in Carina contains a 3.77 day eclipsing binary with star masses 90 and 120 solar masses (1 million years or less)

Computer simulation of the collapse and fragmentation of a molecular cloud