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The open star clusters Trumpler 14, 15 and Collinder
232 |
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Short objekt description:
Our image shows the open star clusters
Trumpler 14, 15 and Collinder 232. The raw sum
images were only exposed briefly for this image to prevent overexposure of the
bright stars of the star clusters. In addition, this also avoided overexposure
of the bright nebulae in which the star clusters are embedded.
Trumpler 14 contains some of the most luminous stars in
our Milky Way. The stars have an age of only about 10 million and the distance
to the solar system is about 9,000 light years.
The most prominent
member of the cluster is HD 93129A, a blue supergiant with 80 times the mass
and about 2.5 million times the luminosity of our Sun, making it one of the
brightest stars in the Milky Way. The system is a spectroscopic binary and
consists of two components of spectral class O, the surface temperature of the
brighter component is about 51,000 Kelvin.
Trumpler 15 15 appears slightly less
concentrated than Trumpler 14, the stars appear to be a little older based on
their spectral classes than the stars in Trumpler 14 and 16. The distance to
the solar system is about 8,600 light years. |
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Collinder 232, another bright star cluster of the Carina
OB1 star association in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way. The brightest
member in the cluster is HD 93250, an extremely hot blue binary and the
brightest X-ray source in the Carina Nebula.
Based on the ages of the
stars and their distance from the solar system, the stars in the open clusters
at the centre of the Carina Nebula - Trumpler 14, 15, 15 and Collinder 228/232
- appear to have formed in a single star-forming wave.
A complete
mosaic of Trumpler 14, 15, 16 und Collinder 232
is shown here. A
wide-angle mosaic of the complete Carina Nebula
here. Collinder 228 in detail we show
here.
« Click here or on the thumbnail to load a large image with
object names and size comparison to the moon. |
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All Images and all Content are ©
by Franz Hofmann + Wolfgang Paech |