We keep going this week with another image of one of our target regions – eventually we might have a look at each and everyone of them. This time it is the region FSR408, which was the latest of the fields we have added to our target list. Only about 2yr ago.
Similar to last weeks post, we have a situation where the radiation from a (some) massive star(s) evaporates the surface of a dust cloud and makes it glow. Here the radiation comes from the cluster of stars that is just to the North-West (top-right) of the nebulosity. There one can clearly see an excess of stars visible compared to the area around it. One can also see the extend of the (gas and) dust cloud, which visibly dims the light of stars (and thus makes them disappear) for much of the Southern (bottom) part of the image.
The cluster itself, FSR408 is named after yours truly, since we discovered it as part of a search for star clusters in 2007. There were two other clusters already known in the vicinity – about 10 arcminutes away from where all the stars are. But we obviously believe that we identified the correct one and in the right place 🙂