Daily Telescope: Spying a double cluster of supergiant stars

Enlarge / A view of the double cluster in Perseus. (credit: Markus Noga)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s November 20, and today’s photo showcases a double cluster of stars in the constellation Perseus.

These two clusters are quite close to one another, within a few hundred light years. However, they lie much further from Earth—each about 7,500 light years away—so the stars must be very bright for us to be able to see them. And indeed they are, as the clusters are made up primarily of young, very hot supergiant stars.