The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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The massive compact star cluster in NGC 3603. The image is a colour composite of observations using the WFPC2 filters F547M (1997) and F555W (2007) (blue), F675W (green) and F814W (red). The field of view is about 20 arcsec across. The boxes show a zoomed view of three foreground stars with a particularly high apparent speed relative to the cluster members. Other fast-moving stars can be spotted by closer examination of the two pictures. Most of the cluster stars move by less than 1/10 of a pixel over the 10-year period, which is not discernible by eye.