“All the stars in a cluster are the same distance away, so you can compare brightness without having to worry about whether a star that appears faint is actually very bright but just far away.”
Carlton Pryor
“The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.”
Galileo Galilei
“In the solar neighborhood and in most stellar clusters, the least massive stars are the most common by far. Our observations with [the Very Large Telescope in Chile] show this is not the case for Messier 12.”
Guido de Marchi
“The question we want to answer is: why are these massive stars sitting in the center of the cluster?”
Tom Megeath
“We believe this process of forming stars in a cluster was exactly the same thing that happened with our very own sun 4 1/2 billion years ago. It tells us a lot about the history of our own solar system.”
Erick T. Young
“If you look at the very young stars in the cluster and the spacing between them, it isn't random spacing. They're all about the same distance apart.”
“We believe that the star clusters lighting up the tips of the pillars are essentially the offspring of the region's single, massive star.”
Lori Allen
