Putting The Jewel Box Star Cluster into Perspective (composite image)

Putting The Jewel Box Star Cluster into Perspective (composite image)

This composite image serves as a still "zoom-in", showing the rich star field where NGC 4755 nestles and then moving in to the detailed Hubble Space Telescope image of the Kappa Crucis Cluster, or Jewel Box, itself.

The range of images begins with a very wide-field view of the sky surrounding NGC 4755. The images then progressively "zoom in" to reveal a "close-up" of the Jewel Box, featuring several very bright, pale blue supergiant stars, a solitary ruby-red supergiant and a variety of other brilliantly colored stars.

Distance: 6,500 light years

The picture on the top left was taken from the ground with a 35-mm camera. The next image is from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2), a large digital atlas of the sky. Next is a very sharp image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory

The first image (left) on the bottom row was taken by the FORS1 instrument on the European Southern Observatory  Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory. The last image (at bottom right) is the one taken by the legendary (and now retired) WFPC2 instrument aboard Hubble.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO), NASA/European Space Agency (ESA), Digitized Sky Survey 2 and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain)

Release Date: Oct. 29, 2009

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