Open Cluster NGC 330

Open star cluster NGC 330 lies around 180,000 light-years away inside the Small Magellanic Cloud. The cluster — which is in the constellation Tucana (The Toucan) — contains a multitude of stars, many of which are scattered across this striking Hubble Space Telescope image. One interesting object in this image is the very small star cluster in the lower left corner of the image, surrounded by a nebula of ionized hydrogen (red) and dust (blue). Named GALFOR 1, the cluster was discovered in 2018 in Hubble's archival data, which was used to produce this image. Scientists are curious whether the nebula around this star cluster contains a bow shock, a crescent-shaped shock wave created when streams of gas collide. Hubble observations of this cluster have been used to investigate why stars in star clusters appear to evolve differently from stars elsewhere, and to determine how large stars can be before they become doomed to end their lives in cataclysmic supernova explosions.