NGC 602 is a young, bright open cluster

Open cluster

An open cluster is a group of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way Galaxy, and many more are thought to exist...

 of star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

s located in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Small Magellanic Cloud

The Small Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy. It has a diameter of about 7,000 light-years and contains several hundred million stars. It has a total mass of approximately 7 billion times the mass of our Sun....

 (SMC), a satellite galaxy

Satellite galaxy

A satellite galaxy orbits a larger galaxy due to gravitational attraction. Although a galaxy is made of a large number of objects which are not connected to each other, it has a center of mass, which represents a weighted average of the positions of each component object...

 to the Milky Way

Milky Way

The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...

. Radiation

Radiation

In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...

 and shock wave

Shock wave

A shock wave is a type of propagating disturbance. Like an ordinary wave, it carries energy and can propagate through a medium or in some cases in the absence of a material medium, through a field such as the electromagnetic field...

s from the stars have pushed away much of the lighter surrounding gas and dust

Interstellar medium

In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, dust, and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space...

 that compose the nebula

Nebula

A nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen gas, helium gas and other ionized gases...

 known as N90, and this in turn has triggered new star formation

Star formation

Star formation is the process by which dense parts of molecular clouds collapse into a ball of plasma to form a star. As a branch of astronomy star formation includes the study of the interstellar medium and giant molecular clouds as precursors to the star formation process and the study of young...

 in the ridges (or "elephant trunks

Elephant trunks

Elephant Trunks are formations of interstellar matter found in space. They are located in O type and B type stars, which can form an expanding bubble known as an H II region. Elephant trunks look like massive pillars or columns of gas, but they come in various shapes, lengths, and colors...

") of the nebula. These even younger, pre-main sequence

Main sequence

The main sequence is a continuous and distinctive band of stars that appears on plots of stellar color versus brightness. These color-magnitude plots are known as Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams after their co-developers, Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell...

 stars are still enshrouded in dust but are visible to the Spitzer Space Telescope

Spitzer Space Telescope

The Spitzer Space Telescope , formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility is an infrared space observatory launched in 2003...

 at infrared

Infrared

Infrared light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength longer than that of visible light, measured from the nominal edge of visible red light at 0.74 micrometres , and extending conventionally to 300 µm...

 wavelengths. The cluster is of particular interest because it is located in the wing of the SMC leading to the Magellanic Bridge

Magellanic Bridge

The Magellanic Bridge is a stream of neutral hydrogen that links the two Magellanic Clouds. It is mostly a low-metallicity gas feature, though a few stars have been found inside it. It should not be confused with the Magellanic Stream, which links the MCs to the Milky Way.-References:* SIMBAD,...

. Hence, while its chemical properties should be similar to those of the rest of the galaxy

Galaxy

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...

, it is relatively isolated and so easier to study.

A number of other, more distant galaxies also appear in the background of the Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...

 images of NGC 602, making for a "tantalizing" and "grand" view.

External links

• Jan 8, 2007 NASA/ESA HST news and photo release on N90 (at the heart of which lies NGC 602)
• NASA/ESA video 'Zooming on NGC 602' (Hubble Space Telescope
  Hubble Space Telescope
  The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...
  
  )
• NGC 602 @ SEDS NGC objects pages\
• "Progressive star formation in the young SMC cluster NGC 602" Carlson, L. R., et al., 2007 ApJL 665, 109
• "The Initial Mass Function of the Stellar Association NGC 602 in the Small Magellanic Cloud with Hubble Space Telescope ACS Observations" Schmalzl, M., et al. 2008 ApJ 681, 290
• "NGC 602 Environment, Kinematics and Origins" Nigra, L., et al., 2008 PASP 120, 972