NGC 602 Cluster and Nebula in SMC

NGC 602 is a young, bright open cluster of stars located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Radiation and shock waves from the stars have pushed away much of the lighter surrounding gas and dust that compose the nebula known as N90, and this in turn has triggered new star formation in the ridges of the nebula. The distance to this object is about 196.000 light-years.

To the right border of this image a faint blue ring is visible, recent studies showed evidence for a supernova remnant and a Pulsar in this area, see labeled version.
Find the publications here: 1, 2.

Find a Hubble/Chandra/Spitzer image of this object here.

Image data:
Ha-O3-RGB (Ha 9x40m, O3 8x40m, R 9x20m, G 6x20m, B 6x20m) total 18,3 h combined, north is up
80cm f/7 Astrooptik Keller corrected cassegrain, FLI Proline 16803, Baader Filters, Prompt 7 CTIO Chile
Processing: Johannes Schedler

Find the image in 25/60 % below, a 100% center crop and a labeled version at bottom (Courtesy Sakib Rasool)

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click here for bigger size

Last modified on Friday, 25 March 2016 09:20

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