be the case for our own Solar System, in which chemical abundances point to the effects of a supernova from a nearby star early in our Solar System's history. Star cloud Technically not star clusters, star clouds are large groups of many stars within a galaxy, spread over very many light-years of space. Often they contain star clusters within them. The stars appear closely packed, but are not usually part of any structure. Within the Milky Way, star clouds show through gaps between dust clouds of the Great Rift, allowing deeper views along our particular line of sight. Star clouds have also been identified in other nearby galaxies. Examples of star clouds include the Large Sagittarius Star Cloud, Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, Scutum Star Cloud, Cygnus Star Cloud, Norma Star Cloud, and NGC 206 in the Andromeda Galaxy. Nomenclature In 1979, the International Astronomical Union's 17th general assembly recommended that newly discovered star clusters, open or globular, within the Galaxy have designations following the convention "Chhmm±ddd", always beginning with the prefix C, where h, m, and d represent the approximate coordinates of the cluster centre in hours and minutes of right ascension, and degrees of declination, respectively, with leading zeros. The designation, once assigned, is not to change, even if subsequent measurements improve on the location of the cluster centre. The first of such designations were assigned by Gosta Lynga in 1982. See also Hypercompact stellar system Robust associations of massive baryonic objects (RAMBOs) References External links WEBDA open cluster database NGC 2419 -Globular Cluster on SKY-MAP.ORG Star Clusters, SEDS Messier pages RG Research: Embedded Clusters Star cluster - full article Encyclopædia Britannica, Super Star Cluster Discovered in Our Own Milky Way Probing the Birth of Super Star Clusters: Implications for Massive Star Formation, Kelsey E. Johnson, 2005 A new population of extended, luminous star clusters in the halo of M31, A.P. Huxor et al., 2004 HST/NICMOS Observations of the Embedded Cluster in NGC 2024: Constraints on the IMF and Binary Fraction, Wilson M. Liu et al., 2003 The Discovery of an Embedded Cluster of High-Mass Stars Near SGR 1900+14, Frederick J. Vrba et al., 2000