Sol was probably born in a
large open star cluster near a massive but rare, O - type star (like Theta1 Orionis C, the brightest of the four central stars of the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion nebula, at left) that exploded as a supernova.
There are over 1000
known open star clusters within the Milky Way, with a wide range of properties, such as size and age, that provide astronomers with clues to how stars form, evolve and die.
Our latest publication is the Atlas
of Open Star Clusters for which we have a PDF sample of the content for you to download.
Note the many details in the nebula, and the newly
formed open star cluster NGC 6530 in the left (Eastern) part of the nebula.
This star is located only about 11.8 light - years (ly) from our Sun, Sol, just north of the center (08:29:48 +26:46.7, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Cancer, the Crab — northwest of the
famous open star cluster M 44 (also known as the Beehive Cluster and Praesepe, Latin for «Manger») and Ascellus Australis (Delta Cancri).
«These new results show that planets in
open star clusters are about as common as they are around isolated stars — but they are not easy to detect,» adds Luca Pasquini (ESO, Garching, Germany), co-author of the new paper [6].
On October 4, 2006, a team of astronomers announced the finding of evidence that Sol formed in a fragment (Solar nebula) of a giant molecular cloud (e.g., the Orion Cloud) of gas and dust that gave birth to a large
open star cluster with hundreds to thousands of members.
Society for Nebulous Knowledge,
Open Star Cluster in Sagittarius by Anabella Gaposchk circa 1903, silver gelatin photogram (baking soda) 2002 (8» x5»).
The loose speckling of stars in this new ESO image is
the open star cluster IC 4651, located within the Milky Way, in the constellation of Ara (The Altar), about 3000 light - years away.
One such beauty is NGC 299,
an open star cluster located within the Small Magellanic Cloud just under 200,000 light - years away.
NGC 299 is
an open star cluster located within the Small Magellanic Cloud just under 200,000 light - years away.
Shashank Dholakia and Shishir Dholakia, Adrian C Wilcox High School, Santa Clara, California A Search for Exoplanets in
the Open Star Clusters Messier 35 and Koposov 62 Using A Novel Large - Scale Photometric Algorithm for the «Crippled» Kepler Mission
The collection of very bright, young stars above and to the right of Eta Carinae is
the open star cluster Trumpler 14.
The additional 42 entries were mostly discovered earlier, and most of them (32) are
open star clusters; there are no planetary nebulae, supernova remnants, elliptical and lenticular galaxies among them, and the only spiral galaxy in this list is our own, the Milky Way.
Messier 46 (M46) is
an open star cluster located in the southern constellation Puppis, the Stern.
There is
an open star cluster, NGC 6530, of young, hot, blue stars probably only a few million years old.