Arches Cluster (NASA, Hubble, 03/09/05)

This is an archive image from 2005, part of our "Think Pink" gallery, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month: www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/sets/72157625045060125/

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This artist's impression shows how the Arches star cluster appears from deep inside the hub of our Milky Way Galaxy. Although hidden from our direct view, the massive cluster lies 25,000 light-years away and is the densest known gathering of young stars in our galaxy. The illustration is based on infrared observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and with ground-based telescopes, which pierced our galaxy's dusty core and snapped images of the luminous cluster of about 2,000 stars.

 

Some of the brightest blue stars in this illustration are among the most massive stars astronomers found with the Hubble telescope, weighing about 130 times more than our Sun. The bright reddish object at upper right is the center of our galaxy, residing 100 light-years away from the Arches cluster.

 

Image Credit: Artist's Concept/NASA/ESA/STScI

 

View original image:

www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_296.html

 

More about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope:

www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

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