Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2016

A stellar laboratory in Sagittarius T he small smattering of bright blue stars in the upper left of this vast new 615 megapixel ESO image is the perfect cosmic lab- oratory in which to study the life and death of stars. Known as Mes- sier 18, this star cluster contains stars that formed together from the same massive cloud of gas and dust. This image, which also features red clouds of glowing hydrogen and dark filaments of dust, was captured by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) lo- cated at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Messier 18 was discovered and catalogued in 1764 by Charles Messier — for whom the Messier Objects are named — during his search for comet-like objects. It lies within the Milky Way, approxi- mately 4600 light-years away in the by ESO