Hidden Jewels – NGC 3293

Bittersweet image as it’s likely the last image from this telescope & camera combination. They’re moving on to a good home to make room for a new frame camera and OTA. This combination achieved two APOD’s so I’ll miss them dearly – but life goes on!

Photographed in HaRGB from my backyard in Melbourne, Australia.

5 hrs Ha 3nm 600 secs
30mins ea RGB 120 secs

Processed in Astropixel Processor & Photoshop CC 2020

About this Image

Hot blue stars shine brightly in this beautiful, recently formed galactic or “open” star cluster. Open cluster NGC 3293 is located in the constellation Carina, lies at a distance of about 8000 light years, and has a particularly high abundance of these young bright stars. A study of NGC 3293 implies that the blue stars are only about 6 million years old, whereas the cluster’s dimmer, redder stars appear to be about 20 million years old. I

f true, star formation in this open cluster took at least 15 million years. Even this amount of time is short, however, when compared with the billions of years stars like our Sun live, and the over-ten billion year lifetimes of many galaxies and our universe. Pictured, NGC 3293 appears just in front of a dense dust lane and red glowing hydrogen gas emanating from the Carina Nebula. (Text: APOD)