Wide-field View: Wishing Well Star Cluster: NGC 3532 | Digitized Sky Survey 2

Wide-field View: Wishing Well Star Cluster: NGC 3532 | Digitized Sky Survey 2

This wide-field view of the sky around the open star cluster NGC 3532 was created from photographic material forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The cluster itself is at the center of the picture and the bright star to its lower left is x Carinae—a very brilliant yellow hypergiant star that is about five times further from Earth than the cluster itself. This star is one of the most distant that can be seen with the naked eye.

Distance: 1,300 light years

The Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) is a ground-based imaging survey of the entire sky in several colors of light produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute through its Guide Star Survey group.

In the bright star cluster, NGC 3532, also known as the Wishing Well Cluster, many stars still shine with a hot bluish color, but more massive ones have become red giants and glow with a rich orange hue.

This open cluster of young stars was named the Wishing Well Cluster because, through a telescope’s eyepiece, it looks like a handful of silver coins twinkling at the bottom of a wishing well.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2
Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin
Release Date: Nov. 26, 2014

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