Opening up a colorful cosmic jewel box One of the most
spectacular star clusters nestles deep in the southern skies
near the Southern Cross in the constellation Crux. October 29,
2009 Provided by Hubble ESA, Garching, Germany October 29, 2009
This image is a close-up view from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space
Telescope of NGC 4755, or the Jewel Box cluster. Several bright,
pale blue supergiant stars, a solitary ruby-red supergiant, and
a variety of other brilliantly colored stars are visible in the
image, as well as many fainter ones, often with intriguing
colors. The huge variety in brightness exists because the
brighter stars are 15 to 20 times the mass of the Sun, while the
dimmest stars are less than half the mass of the Sun. This is
the first image of an open galactic cluster with imaging
extending from the far ultraviolet to the near-infrared. Photo
by NASA/ESA/Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de
Andalucía, Spain) The combination of images taken by three
exceptional telescopes — the NASA/European