WASHINGTON, April 18 (UPI) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed images to date of the open star clusters NGC 265 and NGC 290 in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Two new composite images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys onboard the telescope, a joint venture of NASA and the European Space Agency, show a myriad of stars in clear detail. The two brilliant open star clusters are located about 200,000 light-years away and are roughly 65 light-years across.
The Small Magellanic Cloud, which hosts the two star clusters, is the smaller of the two companion dwarf galaxies of the Milky Way named after the Portuguese seafarer Ferdinand Magellan, astronomers said. The cloud can be seen with the unaided eye as a hazy patch in the constellation Tucana in the Southern Hemisphere.
