Images from the NTU telescope

The image above shows a colour image of the cluster Collinder 421. The image is a composite of six different images taken in May, 2010 with the 0.5m NTU telescope. The data was taken by Guillaume Rambaud, a 2nd year student from Universite de Limoges in France, and analysed by Shan Yang, a Nuffield Bursary Placement student.

This open cluster is quite old (1.2 billion years) and 3,000 light years away. Its lose distribution of stars indicates that this cluster is already dissolving. Astronomers believe that most of the stars in our Galaxy were formed in clusters and then dissolved into the disk of our Galaxy.

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