Because of this, the gravitational pull between stars in open clusters is weaker, and the stars will generally drift apart over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Unlike globular star clusters, the stars within open clusters are much further apart. Most open star clusters are less than a billion years old, making them far younger than globular star clusters. Open star clusters are also relatively young since the stars within them tend to go supernova in only a few million years. While a globular cluster may contain millions of stars, an open will cluster will have hundreds to thousands. Rather than containing a vast number of low mass stars, open clusters contain a small number of high mass stars. Open star clusters are the opposite of globular clusters. Open Clusters The Pleiades is one of the closest open star clusters to our solar system. Messier 13 is one of the easiest star clusters to see with a small telescope. The stars within Messier 13 are so close to one another that they occasionally collide, producing a small number of high mass, blue stars. Messier 13 is 145 light years in diameter and 22,180 light years away from our solar system. One of the largest globular clusters in the Milky Way is Messier 13, a vast globular cluster located in the constellation Hercules. Globular clusters can remain intact for many billions of years due to the fact that the gravitational pull of the stars maintains the entire structure. The small distance between individual stars also means that the gravitational pull between them is stronger. Most stars in a globular cluster are only light hours to light days apart. Stars within globular clusters are packed together in a relatively small region of space. Since globular clusters mostly contain low mass stars, they tend to be many billions of years old. Lower mass stars burn through their fuel at a much slower rate than high mass stars, and so they exist for far longer periods of time. Globular star clusters generally contain millions of individual stars, the majority of which are low mass, red stars. What are these types of clusters and what makes them different? Globular Clusters Hubble took this image of the globular star cluster called Messier 13. Star clusters come in two types: globular clusters and open clusters. Stars can congregate together in vast numbers, forming what is known as a star cluster. Most of the stars in the Milky Way exist in systems of two or more stars. Interestingly, our sun is actually unique in that there are no other stars around it. Instead, this section of the cloud is pervaded by more evolved stars, which can still excite the gas and generate emission nebulae.Our solar system contains only one star, the sun. The regions in which blue tapers off and becomes red are where the cone of influence ends-the stellar winds simply have no effect there. The stars in the cluster doing a majority of the work, called NGC 2100, burn so brilliantly, they can set oxygen alight. These things, in turn, largely correspond to temperature. For instance, the stars themselves are shown in true color, while ionized hydrogen can be seen in red, and oxygen in blue.
By putting them all together, the image paints a clear picture of what's happening inside the nebular cloud. This image, captured using the ESO's New Technology Telescope, combines multiple exposures, each taken with a specialized color filter. NGC 2100 is very unlucky in that regard, as it can be found within close proximity to the former region (otherwise known as 30 Doradus). In fact, the two are so close together, you can actually see the Tarantula Nebula peeking through in the lower left. Usually, when a telescope is focused on our galactic neighbor, it concentrates on one of two regions: either the Tarantula Nebula or N44. Meet NGC 2100: a star cluster with an accompanying nebula in one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Image Credit: ESO (Acknowledgement: David Roma)
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