NGC 3603

9.1 like

4 ' x 4'

22,000

J. F. W. Herschel

March 14, 1834

NGC 3603 • OCL 854 • ESO 129- SC16 • h 3334 • GC 2354

NGC 3603 is an emission nebula in the constellation keel of the boat, which is about 22,000 light-years away from Earth. NGC 3603 is located in the Sagittarius - Carina arm of our Milky Way is about 26,000 light years from the center of our galaxy away, about the same as our Sun.

NGC 3603 is also an open cluster, which, has the largest known cluster of giant stars, so-called Wolf -Rayet stars in our Milky Way. This cluster is a very active H II region with very young stars that are about 2 million years old. By comparison, our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old.

Just off of the open cluster, the massive star Sher 25 is on the image of Hubble something left above the star cluster with a visible ring. Sher 25 is in the final stages of its star's life and will explode in some 1000 years ago as a supernova.

Discoveries

The emission nebula NGC 3603 was discovered on March 14, 1834 by the British astronomer John Frederick William Herschel.

2007 was discovered 3603 the so far the only star in the emission nebula NGC, its mass could be determined with high accuracy to more than 100 solar masses. He has been using the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory found by Canadian astronomers and comes to a weight of 114 solar masses. It forms a 84 solar mass supernova a binary star system (NGC 3603 A1). For another pair of stars (WR 20a) respectively around 80 solar masses were calculated.