A dazzling 'jewel-box' collection of over 20, 000 stars can be seen in crystal clarity in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The young (40 million year old) cluster, called NGC 1818, is 164, 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The LMC, a site of vigorous current star formation, is an ideal nearby laboratory for studying stellar evolution.

Credit: Rebecca Elson and Richard Sword, Cambridge UK, and NASA/ESA (Original WFPC2image courtesy J. Westphal, Caltech)