Star Clusters and Binary Systems

Most Stars are scattered Randomly throughout space, but many can be seen to from small irregular groups.  These open clusters are found scattered throughout the spiral arms of our galaxy.  They are comprised of a few dozen to hundreds of young stars and often contain bits of nebulosity from which they were born.

Globular clusters are tightly packed spherical collections of stars numbering in the hundred thousands.  These tight balls of stars are gravitationally attracted and hover in the space above and below the galaxy termed the galactic halo.  Globular clusters are among the oldest known class of object

A binary star is a star system consisting of two stars orbiting around their common center of mass. The brighter star is called the primary and the other is its companion star, or secondary. Research between the early 19th century and today suggests that many stars are part of either binary star systems or star systems with more than two stars, called multiple star systems. The term double star may be used synonymously with binary star, but more generally, a double star may be either a binary star or an optical double star which consists of two stars with no physical connection but which appear close together in the sky as seen from the Earth.