| Hot white dwarf shines in young star cluster | Dec 1995 | ||
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A dazzling "jewel-box" collection of over 20,000 stars can be seen in crystal clarity in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The young (40 million year old) cluster, called NGC 1818, is 164,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. | ||
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| Image Credit: Rebecca Elson and Richard Sword, Cambridge UK, and NASA (Original WFPC2 image courtesy J. Westphal, Caltech). | |||
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| A
dazzling "jewel-box" collection of over 20,000 stars can be seen in crystal
clarity in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, taken with the Wide Field
and Planetary Camera 2. The young (40 million year old) cluster, called
NGC 1818, is 164,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC),
a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The LMC, a site of vigorous current
star formation, is an ideal nearby laboratory for studying stellar evolution.
In the cluster, astronomers have found a young white dwarf star, which has only very recently formed following the burnout of a red giant. |
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Based
on this observation astronomers conclude that the red giant progenitor star
was 7.6 times the mass of our Sun. Previously, astronomers have estimated
that stars anywhere from 6 to 10 solar masses would not just quietly fade
away as white dwarfs but abruptly self-destruct in torrential explosions.
Hubble can easily resolve the star in the crowded cluster, and detect its intense blue-white glow from a sizzling surface temperature of 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. |
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| Name:
NGC 1818 Distance: 164,000 light-years Constellation: Dorado Age: 40 million years Class: Rich star cluster Apparent magnitude: 9.7 Apparent diameter: 7 arc minutes |
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