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NGC 602
NGC 602 is a young, bright open cluster of stars located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. It is embedded in a nebula known as N90. Radiation and shock waves from the stars of NGC 602 have pushed away much of the lighter surrounding gas and dust that is N90, and this in turn has triggered new star formation in the ridges (or " elephant trunks") of the nebula. These even younger, pre-main sequence stars are still enshrouded in dust but are visible to the Spitzer Space Telescope at infrared wavelengths. The cluster is of particular interest because it is located in the wing of the SMC leading to the Magellanic Bridge. Hence, while its chemical properties should be similar to those of the rest of the galaxy, it is relatively isolated and so easier to study. NGC 602 contains three main condensations of stars. The central core is NGC 602a, with the compact NGC 602b 100 arc-seconds to the NNW. NGC 602c is a looser grouping 11 arc-minutes to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SMC AB8
AB8, also known as SMC WR8, is a binary star in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). A Wolf-Rayet star and a main sequence companion of stellar classification, spectral type O orbit in a period of 16.638 days. It is one of only nine known WO stars, the only Wolf-Rayet star in the SMC not on the nitrogen sequence, and the only Wolf-Rayet star in the SMC outside the main bar. Discovery AB8 was first discovered by Lindsay in 1961, when it was catalogued as entry 547 in a list of emission line objects in the SMC. Nicholas Sanduleak, Sanduleak listed it as a confirmed member of the SMC, gave a spectral type of WR + OB, and identified it as one of only five stars that were not nuclei of planetary nebulae, but showed OVI emission in their spectra. These would later be formally grouped as the WO class, the oxygen sequence of Wolf-Rayet stars. In 1978, before the WO class was coined, Breysacher and Bengt Westerlund, Westerlund gave a spectral type of WC4? + OB. The definitive c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
