Star Cluster
Star clusters or star clouds are groups of stars. Two types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters are tight groups of hundreds of thousands of very old stars which are gravitationally bound, while open clusters, more loosely clustered groups of stars, generally contain fewer than a few hundred members, and are often very young. Open clusters become disrupted over time by the gravitational influence of giant molecular clouds as they move through the galaxy, but cluster members will continue to move in broadly the same direction through space even though they are no longer gravitationally bound; they are then known as a stellar association, sometimes also referred to as a moving group.
Star clusters visible to the naked eye include Pleiades, Hyades and the Beehive Cluster.
Read more about Star Cluster: Globular Cluster, Intermediate Forms, Open Clusters, Stellar Associations, Astronomical Significance of Clusters
Famous quotes containing the words star and/or cluster:
“Fear not: that ultimate Star is frail,
only a flake of snow,
whirled in His breath.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Next week Reagan will probably announce that American scientists have discovered that the entire U.S. agricultural surplus can be compacted into a giant tomato one thousand miles across, which will be suspended above the Kremlin from a cluster of U.S. satellites flying in geosynchronous orbit. At the first sign of trouble the satellites will drop the tomato on the Kremlin, drowning the fractious Muscovites in ketchup.”
—Alexander Cockburn (b. 1941)