Image: Hubble Telescope spies sparkling spray of stars in NGC 2660

This glittering group of stars, shining by way of the darkness like sparks left behind by a firework, is NGC 2660 within the constellation Vela, greatest considered within the southern sky. NGC 2660 is an open cluster, a sort of star cluster that may comprise wherever from tens to some tons of of stars loosely certain collectively by gravity.

The stars of open clusters type out of the identical area of fuel and dust and thus share many traits, equivalent to age and chemical composition. Not like globular clusters—their historical, denser, and extra tightly-packed cousins—open clusters are simpler to review since astronomers can extra simply distinguish between particular person stars. Their stars may be outdated or younger, and so they might disperse after a number of million years into the spiral or irregular galaxies the place they’re born.

The spikes surrounding lots of the stars on this picture are “diffraction spikes,” which happen when the glow from shiny factors of sunshine displays off of Hubble’s secondary mirror assist. The brilliant crimson object to the left with the very distinguished diffraction spikes is a foreground star that’s not a part of the cluster. Hubble noticed this open cluster as a part of a program to review the ages of white dwarf stars in open clusters.