Around The Arches Cluster
The most compact cluster of stars known in our galaxy,
the Arches cluster, boasts 100 or so massive, young
stars contained within a diameter of one light-year.
Seen toward the
constellation Sagittarius, the
Arches cluster is
about 25,000 light-years from planet
Earth and lies within a scant 100 light-years of
the supermassive black hole believed to lurk
in our Milky Way Galaxy's center.
This
combination of images in
radio,
infrared, and
x-ray light
illustrates this star cluster's bizarre galactic neighborhood.
Shown
in red, radio emission traces the filamentary arching
structures near
the galactic center around the
Arches cluster location.
Within the zoomed inset box, infrared image data shows some of
the cluster's individual stars as bright point-like sources.
The diffuse emission in blue surrounding the cluster stars is a
false-color
x-ray image of an enveloping cloud of 60 million degree
gas -- the
first time such an energetic star cluster halo has
been detected.
Astronomers
consider the tightly packed and relatively nearby Arches cluster,
an analog of the furious star forming regions
in galaxies
millions of light-years away.