Zooming in on the Quintuplet Cluster

Beginning from the full splendour of the Milky Way, this video — in infrared — zooms in slowly on the Quintuplet Cluster. Although named for its five brightest stars, the cluster is home to hundreds more, especially massive young stars.

The cluster is located close to the Arches Cluster and is just 100 light-years from the centre of our galaxy. Its proximity to the dust at the centre of the galaxy means that much of its visible light is blocked, which helped to keep the cluster unknown until its discovery in 1990, when it was revealed by observations in the infrared. Infrared images of the cluster, like the one shown in this video, allow us to see through the obscuring dust to the hot stars in the cluster.