False-Color Near-Infrared Image of the Core of the Young Massive Cluster RCW 38 (IMAGE)
Caption
This is a false-color near-infrared image of the core of the young massive cluster RCW 38 taken with the adaptive-optics camera NACO at the ESO's Very Large Telescope. RCW 38 lies at a distance of about 5500 light years from the Sun. The field of view of the central image is approximately 1 arc minute, or 1.5 light years across. The insets, each spanning about 0.07 light years on a side, show a subset of the faintest and least massive cluster candidate brown dwarfs (indicated by arrows) of RCW 38 discovered in this new image. These candidate brown dwarfs might weigh only a few tens of Jupiter masses, or about 100 times less than the most massive stars seen towards the centre of the image.
Credit
Credit: Koraljka Muzic, University of Lisbon, Portugal / Aleks Scholz, University of St Andrews, UK / Rainer Schoedel, University of Granada, Spain / Vincent Geers, UKATC / Ray Jayawardhana, York University, Canada / Joana Ascenso, University of Lisbon, University of Porto, Portugal / Lucas Cieza, University Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. The study is based on observations conducted with the VLT at the European Southern Observatory.
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