Hubble Sees Impressive Star Cluster in Neighboring Galaxy

A recent survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud – one of the largest dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way – yielded an impressive image of the globular star cluster NGC 1846. The formation contains tens of thousands of stars spread out over a large portion of space.

The cluster is located in the LMC's outer halo. This is weird to astronomers, since massive stellar agglomerations can usually be found near the central structure of galaxies, regardless of their size.

But what fascinated experts even more is the presence of a faint green bubble (inset) in the lower portions of the image. This object does not appear to be a part of NGC 1846, and looks like a planetary nebula, the remnant of a massive stellar explosion that took place a long time ago.

At this point, experts are trying to figure out whether the weird object is located closer to Earth than the globular cluster, or whether it was formed from a star within the cluster itself. The image seen here was captured using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.