A cluster of blue and white stars, shining brightly against the background of the surrounding red cloud of hydrogen, was captured in the next snapshot at the Southern European Observatory of La Silla in Chile.
The photograph, in its scale resembling the colors of the American flag, was taken just on the eve of Independence Day, celebrated in the United States on July 4. The image shows a star cluster NGC 2367 surrounded by a large cloud of hydrogen. These space objects are part of the super-shell, a huge expanding structure at the very edge of the Milky Way.
The stars that make up NGC 2367 are still relatively young and bright, and shine with a blue diamond light. However, this cluster will not be so tightly grouped for a long time - the gravity of neighboring star formations and gas clouds located nearby will gradually tear apart NGC 2367 into parts and finally separate these stars over the next hundred millions of years, which by cosmic standards is not too much . The stars became visible against the background of a red cloud of hydrogen escaping from the nebula, after pumping a large voltage into it due to the radioactivity of the stars that make up it. This nebula is the core of a more massive nebula, known as Brand 16, which, in turn, enters an even larger, rather rapidly expanding at the moment. Already, its diameter reaches several light years, and its structure is considered one of the most massive in our galaxy.
NGC 2367 is about 7,000 light-years from Earth. Nebula appears periodically in the sky in the constellation Canis Major and can be viewed with the help of even a small telescope.
