These two clusters of bright, newly formed star surrounded bya glowing nebula lie 10 million light-years away in the dim,irregular galaxy cataloged as NGC 2366.The HubbleSpace Telescope image shows that the youngest cluster,the bottom one at about 2 million years old,is still surrounded by the gas and dust cloud it condensed from, whil powerful stellar winds from the starsin the older cluster at the top (4-5 million years old),have begun to clear away its central areas giving the entire nebulaan apparent inverted hook shape.Compared to the sun, the stars in these cluster are massive an short lived.The brightest one, near the tip of the hook, is a rare Luminous Blue Variablewith 30 to 60 times the mass of the sun - similar to the erruptiv Eta Carinae in our own Milky Way.Stars this massiv are extremely variable.A comparison with ground based images indicates that in threeyears this star's brightness increased by about 40 times making it currentlythe brightest star i this dim galaxy.
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