Star Cluster NGC 1850 in Dorado | ESO's Very Large Telescope & Hubble

Star Cluster NGC 1850 in Dorado | ESO's Very Large Telescope & Hubble

This image shows NGC 1850, a cluster of thousands of stars roughly 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a Milky Way neighbor. The reddish filaments surrounding the cluster, made of vast clouds of hydrogen, are believed to be the remnants of supernova explosions. 

The image is an overlay of observations conducted in visible light with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and NASA/European Space Agency’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The VLT captured the wide field of the image and the filaments, while the central cluster was imaged by the HST.  

Among many stars, this cluster is home to a black hole eleven times as massive as the Sun and to a five-solar-mass star orbiting it. By looking at the star’s orbit, a team of astronomers were able to infer the presence of the black hole, making it the first small black hole outside of our galaxy to be found this way. For this discovery, the team used the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the VLT.

Credit: ESO, NASA/ESA/R. Gilmozzi/S. Casertano, J. Schmidt

Release Date: Nov. 11, 2021

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