7 rare images of star clusters captured by NASA

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have caught two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging. The clusters are 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud,

NGC 1850 is a double cluster and a super star cluster in the Dorado constellation, located in the northwest part of the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

This stellar “jewel box” ,NGC 3603, is one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy.

The star cluster Pismis 24 lies within the much larger emission nebula called NGC 6357, located about 8,000 light-years from Earth. 

Open clusters contain between a few dozen and a few thousand stars, all formed from the same initial cloud of gas and dust.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Globular clusters, which are much larger and denser than open clusters, containing several thousand to millions of stars all formed from a shared nebula.

NASA captured Westerlund 1, which is the biggest and closest “super” star cluster to Earth. Westerlund 1 is between about 3 million and 5 million years old.

Credit: NASA