Video: Hubble Glimpses Stars on the Move

Wednesday, June 2, 2010 - 16:21 in Astronomy & Space

Stars On the Move The core of the star cluster in the nebula NGC 3603 is shown in great detail in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope. This is the more recent of two photos, taken 10 years apart, that may help explain how stars move inside clusters. NASA, ESA New photos from the Hubble Space Telescope show once again the value of having a decades-old orbiting observatory. After examining identical photos taken 10 years apart, scientists measured the speeds of individual stars in a distant nebula - a feat akin to seeing the apparent thickness of a human hair 500 miles away. The stars were not moving in the ways scientists expected, so the finding could illuminate star-formation theories, the researchers say. Most stars form in clusters like NGC 3603, which contains about 10,000 stars packed into a relatively small area. Boyke Rochau from the Max Planck Institute for...

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