Hubble captures Milky Way’s brightest
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way. It is located about 25 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), close to the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is, like its neighbour the Quintuplet Cluster, a fairly young astronomical object at between 2-million and 4-million years old. The Arches cluster is so dense that in a region with a radius equal to the distance between the sun and its nearest star there would be over 100 000 stars. At least 150 stars within the cluster are among the brightest ever discovered in the Milky Way.
