Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Durbin, J. Dalcanton, and B. F. Williams (University of Washington)

IC 142 is a region of ionised hydrogen and a large stellar association in the Triangulum Galaxy. A stellar association is a very loose cluster of stars that share a common origin, but have become gravitationally unbound and are slowly moving apart. Associations are primarily identified by their common movement vectors and ages. The region IC 142 was discovered on 28 October 1889 by astronomer Guillaume Bigourdan. This image is only a tiny part of the large wide-field image of the Triangulum Galaxy created by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1901d/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, None, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License