There are more than 1000 known open star clusters within the Milky Way galaxy; most have been discovered fairly recently in terms of astronomical history; we will, undoubtedly, discover others as our understanding and awareness of the home galaxy expands. It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of open clusters in local galactic space. Most are likely hidden behind and within dark molecular clouds. Unlike globular clusters—massive cousins to open clusters—these stellar aggregates contain fewer stars; as a result of this, they are not as gravitationally-bound. Member stars of open clusters migrate outward. As open clusters exist within the spiral arms of the parent galaxy (and not in a roughly spherical halo around the central bulge of any galactic body) and so they are easily disrupted by gravitational interactions with other clusters and big molecular clouds. Gravitational interactions within open clusters may also result in the ejection of stars from the central body. The presence of observable open clusters is one of the ways in which a galaxy may be identified; there are no such bodies within elliptical galaxies, as star formation ceased many millions of years ago in ellipticals. Any open clusters in such galactic bodies have long since dispersed. In irregular galaxies, open clusters are distributed throughout the galactic body, normally defining the highest concentrations of gas density. In spiral galaxies, most notably our own Milky Way, open clusters exist within the spiral arms, strongly concentrated near the galactic plane. As they disperse over time, the constituent open cluster stars simply move into the more generalized galactic medium. * * * In the image shown here, I guess you can say that this is the Gimp Cluster, since I created this scene using the Gimp. It exists way out in the fringe areas of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm. The Sagittarius Arm is the next arm outward from the Orion Spiral Arm, which is—of course—where our own sun is located. It would seem that most open clusters are choosy about where they form, and so there are more open clusters the farther outward one moves in the galaxy. The Gimp Cluster is no exception to this rule. As most member stars of open clusters are fairly hot and fairly more massive then our own sun, they don’t tend to live very long. As you can see, most of the members of the Gimp Cluster are mostly blue. Bad news if you’re a protein-derived life form. Fortunately for the intriguing people-sorts-of-things that live on the planet off in the distance, their home star (in the upper right corner) is a nice, toasty G-type body, not too different than our own sun. The star cluster, star-field, and nebula were all created with the Gimp and there are no photographic elements in that portion of this image. The planet and its two moons are taken from three photographs of brick and sidewalk textures. I have amassed quite a collection of Star Wars action figures, and the spaceship in this image is actually a macro photograph of the rocket-pack accessory that came with my purchase of the Jango Fett character figure. I was amazed at how like a spaceship the thing looked, once I yanked it off of the figure’s back (don’t worry, it snaps back on) and I’m pleased that a macro photograph of that same rocket pack has provided a good 45 minutes of entertainment as I created this image. Now, as I look at this scene, I suspect there might be a story with it. I’ll let you know if something comes out of it. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.