Star cluster Messier 18 is located at a distance of 4600 light years from Earth.
Astronomers using the very large telescope received the star cluster Messier 18, which is an ideal cosmic laboratory for the study of the birth and death of stars.
As reported on the website of the European southern Observatory, all the stars of the cluster were formed from the same gas-dust disk.
Messier 18 was discovered by astronomer Charles Messier in 1764. It is located in the constellation Sagittarius at a distance of about 4600 light-years from Earth and consists of many stars from the same family, related to the gravitational force.
Blue and white color of the stellar population in Messier 18 suggests that these stars are very young – they are only about 30 million years. Belonging to same “family” means that the differences between these stars is due only to the difference of their masses, and not by different distances from Earth and different chemical composition.
That is why the study of clusters so it helps astronomers in developing and testing theories of the formation and evolution of stars.
