NGC 5253


This remarkable starburst dwarf galaxy, 2.8 Mpc away, is the site of the youngest starburst known. This is the Halpha image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The black blob in the center is where an intense radio and infrared source has been blacked out. We consider this source to be a super-star-cluster and the very youngest globular cluster--only about a million years old--that has ever been observed. The starburst in this galaxy may have been started by the accretion of a small cloud of gas from inter-galactic space.