Sunny Priyan
This 100 million-year-old globular cluster, located 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is a birthplace for billions of stars.
Typical of globular clusters, it is a spherical collection of densely packed stars held together by mutual gravitational attraction.
Unlike most globular clusters, however, the stars of NGC 1850 are relatively young. Globular clusters with young stars such as NGC 1850 are not present in our own Milky Way galaxy.
Astrophysicists believe that as the first stars in NGC 1850 formed, they ejected matter that remained trapped by the cluster's high gravity.
The intense gravity of NGC 1850 pulled in hydrogen and helium, fueling a second generation of stars. In 2021, scientists discovered a black hole in NGC 1850 and observed hot blue stars and 200 red giants.
NGC 1850, surrounded by nebula-like structures from supernova blasts, is 63,000 times the Sun's mass, with a core 20 light-years wide, captured through Hubble's multi-wavelength observations.