7 majestic images of star clusters captured by NASA Hubble Telescope

The Pillars of Creation is a region where young stars are forming – or have barely burst from their dusty cocoons as they continue to form.

 This stellar "jewel box" is one of the most massive young star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. Thousands of sparkling young stars nestled within the giant nebula NGC 3603. 

Open clusters contain between a few dozen and a few thousand stars. The Milky Way is home to more than a thousand of these clusters, and even our Sun may have formed in an open cluster.

Globular clusters are much larger and denser than open clusters. It lies on the dusty outskirts of galaxies and their stars are older than those in open clusters. 

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured Hodge 301 which is a star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula, visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere. The cluster and nebula lie about 168,000 light years away.

The star cluster Pismis 24 lies within the much larger emission nebula called NGC 6357, located about 8,000 light-years from Earth.

NGC 2040 is an open star cluster located 160,000 light years away. It is a young group of stars in one of the largest star formation regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Credit: NASA