A handful of bright stars are strewn across the cosmos like sparkling sequins on velvet in this Hubble image of a section of Messier 67, also known as NGC 2682, the King Cobra Cluster, and the Golden Eye Cluster.

M67 is a collection of over 500 stars that are loosely gravitationally bound, a grouping known as an open cluster. Open clusters like this are typically quite young, but M67 is one of the oldest known open clusters at approximately 4 billion years of age ― about the same as our Sun. In fact, the cluster contains about 100 stars that are similar to our Sun in composition and age, along with many red giant and white dwarf stars. It is also home to around 30 “blue stragglers” ― odd stars that are brighter and bluer than the population from which they formed, perhaps as the result of pulling material from a binary companion. M67 is the oldest open cluster in the Messier catalog.

M67 is also unusual in its location, nearly 1,500 light-years above the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Most open clusters are distributed along the central plane of the Milky Way.

M67 was first recorded by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Koehler in 1779, then rediscovered and identified as a collection of stars by Charles Messier a year later. It resides about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer.

To find M67, look for the upside-down Y in Cancer. M67 is west of the easternmost star in the Y. Alternately, go to the center of an imaginary line drawn between Regulus in Leo and Procyon in Canis Minor and look slightly north. M67 is visible in binoculars as a faint patch of light, and telescopes can resolve from a few up to 100 individual stars. Hubble’s image focuses in on just a small section of the cluster to show a detailed view of some of its colorful stars.

M67 is best viewed in the spring skies in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly March.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Krist (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)


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For Hubble's Messier catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...

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Hubble peered through the far southwestern edge of open cluster Messier 44 with its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument to view this teeming collection of stars and background galaxies. Hubble was studying distant galaxies to explore the distribution of their surrounding magnetic fields, which may be elevated from the galaxies by outflowing galactic winds.

Messier 44, also famously known as the Beehive Cluster or Praesepe, swarms with activity as its name would suggest. This open cluster of around 1,000 stars, loosely connected by gravity, is one of the closest to Earth at approximately 600 light-years away. The stars of open clusters form from the same cloud of collapsing gas and the Beehive Cluster is thought to be quite young, around 600-700 million years old. In contrast, its Milky Way home is known to be about 4.6 billion years old.

M44 was first characterized as more than a cloudy nebula by Galileo, who resolved around 40 of the stars within it. Hubble uses its high-resolution vision to focus in on sections of the nearby cluster, capturing detailed views of bright stars mingled with an assortment of background galaxies. In these images, Hubble peered through the outskirts of M44 to explore the workings of galaxies far beyond.

M44 covers the space of about three full moons (or 1.5 degrees) on the sky in the constellation Cancer and is best seen in the Northern Hemisphere’s spring sky, reaching its highest point in March. To the unaided eye, it looks like a blur of light positioned just above where the three branches of the upside-down “Y” of Cancer meet, while a pair of binoculars can resolve around 20 stars. A telescope will reveal scores to hundreds more of the cluster’s collection of mostly blue-white stars. In somewhat light-polluted skies, find it by going to the center of an imaginary line drawn between Regulus in Leo and Pollux in Gemini and looking slightly south and west.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and S. Lilly (Eidgenossiche Technische Hochschule) and DECam/CTIO/NOIRLabProcessing/NSF/AURA; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)


For more information, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...

For Hubble's Messier catalog website and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...

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Tags:   Messier Messier Object Messier Catalog NASA Hubble ESA Hubble Space Telescope telescope space telescope cosmos universe space cosmic astronomy galaxy galaxies M44 Messier 44 stars star cluster open cluster

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The scattered stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355 are strewn across this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 6355 is a galactic globular cluster that resides in our Milky Way galaxy's inner regions. It is less than 50,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus.

Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groups of tens of thousands to millions of stars that are associated with all types of galaxies. Their dense populations of stars and mutual gravitational attraction give these clusters a roughly spherical shape that holds a bright, central concentration of stars surrounded by an increasingly sparse sprinkling of stars. The dense, bright core of NGC 6355 shines in crystal-clear detail as Hubble is able to resolve individual stars in the crowded area toward the center of this image.

Hubble has revolutionized the study of globular clusters. It is almost impossible to distinguish individual stars in globular clusters with ground-based telescopes. Hubble’s unique capabilities and vantage point above Earth’s light-distorting atmosphere allow it to capture a globular cluster’s constituent stars in detail.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola, R. Cohen

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