                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                              2025 December 28
    The ball of colorful stars is shown where the center is so dense with
        stars it is hard to identify individual stars. Please see the
                 explanation for more detailed information.

          NGC 1898: Globular Cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud
                       Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

   Explanation: Jewels don't shine this bright -- only stars do. And
   almost every spot in this jewel-box of an image from the Hubble Space
   Telescope is a star. Now, some stars are more red than our Sun, and
   some more blue -- but all of them are much farther away. Although it
   takes light about 8 minutes to reach Earth from the Sun, NGC 1898 is so
   far away that it takes light about 160,000 years to get here. This huge
   ball of stars, NGC 1898, is called a globular cluster and resides in
   the central bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) -- a satellite
   galaxy of our Milky Way Galaxy. The featured multi-colored image
   includes light from the infrared to the ultraviolet and was taken to
   help determine if the stars of NGC 1898 all formed at the same time or
   at different times. There are increasing indications that most globular
   clusters formed stars in stages, and that, in particular, stars from
   NGC 1898 formed shortly after ancient encounters with the Small
   Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and our Milky Way Galaxy.

     Space Telescopes Live: Where are Hubble and Webb looking right now?
                        Tomorrow's picture: boom star
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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