In the center of my image, embedded in clouds of glowing hydrogen and dark dust bands, lies one of the brightest and most beautiful star clusters in the southern sky, the Gem or Gemstone Cluster in the constellation Carina. Similar to a special piece of jewelry, it is studded with a red and several hot, blue giant stars. Compared to our approximately 4.5 billion year old sun, the cluster, with an age of around 15 million years, is more of a youngster with no great future. Due to their high energy consumption, blue giants only live for a few tens of millions of years before they blow up into a red giant and finally explode as a supernova.
GEM Cluster – NGC3293