A close-up look at the star cluster NGC 3293

This pan video gives a close-up view of a colourful image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. It shows a group of young stars huddled together against a backdrop of clouds of glowing gas and lanes of dust. This star cluster, known as NGC 3293, would have been just a cloud of gas and dust itself about ten million years ago, but as stars began to form it became the bright group we see here. Clusters like this are celestial laboratories that allow astronomers to learn more about how stars evolve.