Euclid galactic bulge – star cluster

This image shows an area of the observations of the galactic bulge, made by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. Here the open star cluster NGC 6451 is visible, 8700 light-years away from us.

The area is zoomed in ten times compared to the full image.

Explore this image at the highest resolution in ESASky.

Read more about this image here.

[Image description: A very dense field of tiny, closely packed points of light fills the image. The overall colour is warm, with many orange-yellow, gold and white points spread evenly across the scene. Toward the centre, the stars appear more tightly clustered and brighter. A few slightly bluish points stand out among the warmer colours, with no large dark patches visible.]

Technical details:

The Euclid galactic bulge survey was conducted in early 2025 using Euclid’s optical camera VIS (monochromatic, one colour). These are first and foremost Euclid images, defined by Euclid’s crisp resolution and spectacularly wide field of view; the colours were added using observations captured in the summer of 2025 with the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope's MegaCam camera (CFHT-Megacam) in Hawai’i. The colours captured by MegaCam are in optical light through three broad-band filters (u, g, and r) overlapping the very broad VIS band over the r-band. The appearance of the most luminous stars in these images looks different than those generated from Euclid-only images, with additional diffraction spikes and a subtle halo around the very bright stars. This a consequence of combining Euclid VIS data, for their sensitivity and sharpness, and CFHT-MegaCam for the colours. Subtle differences in optical design of the two telescopes become apparent for the brighter objects.