Magnitude +10.4 globular cluster NGC 1854 (α=05h 09m 20.2s, δ=-68° 50′ 56″ J2000.0) was discovered in 1826 by James Dunlop. It lies 135,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This Hubble Space Telescope view is just 2.4 x 1.5 arcminutes in size. Click the image for a larger version. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA.This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster NGC 1854, a gathering of white and blue stars in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish). NGC 1854 is located about 135,000 light-years away, in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of our closest cosmic neighbours and a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The LMC is a hotbed of vigorous star formation. Rich in interstellar gas and dust, the galaxy is home to approximately 60 globular clusters and 700 open clusters. These clusters are frequently the subject of astronomical research, as the Large Magellanic Cloud and its little sister, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are the only systems known to contain clusters at all stages of evolution. Hubble is often used to study these clusters as its extremely high-resolution cameras can resolve individual stars, even at the clusters’ crowded cores, revealing their mass, size and degree of evolution.
Two astronomy students from Leiden University have mapped the entire Milky Way Galaxy in dwarf stars for the first time. They show that there are a total of 58 billion dwarf stars, of which seven percent reside in the outer regions of our galaxy. This result is the most comprehensive model ever for the distribution of these stars.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), about 16 million light-years away. Within the bright ring or starburst ring around Messier 94, new stars are forming at a high rate and many young, bright stars are present within it.
Put on your red-blue 3D glasses to appreciate this view of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as seen by Philae’s ROLIS imaging system from a distance of 2 miles (3 km).
