Hubble Captures Dazzling Space 'Diamonds'

NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the image of a luminous star cluster, Trumpler 14, which is located 8000 light-years away in the center of the Carina Nebula, according to a news release. Trumpler 14 is one of the 1100 known open clusters in the Milky Way and is home to some of the brightest stars in the galaxy.

The Trumpler 14 star cluster is about 500,000 years old and it has one of the largest collections of hot, giant and bright stars. Trumpler 14 is one of the most populated clusters in the Carina Nebula, however, it is also one of the youngest clusters. Trumpler 14 contains a large number of young, bright, white-blue stars, which have only a few million years left before they die and explode as supernovae, according to the researchers.

These stars release high speed particles from their surfaces, where the winds are dispersed into space. These winds sometimes collide with surrounding materials, which produces shock waves that heat the gas to millions of degrees, which causes massive outbursts of X-rays. These stellar winds move gas and dust from nearby clouds, which lead to the formation of new stars.

The researchers averaged that Trumpler 14 contains about 2000 stars, whose sizes are from less than one-tenth to several tens of times the mass of the sun. 

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