NGC 281 is a busy region of star formation. It holds a centralized cluster of hot blue stars, Bok globules of dust and gas, and lanes of obscuring dust overtop the bright red hydrogen emission. NGC 281 lies roughly 9,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia.

This wide-field view of the star-forming region NGC 281 was taken with the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ.

Credit: T.A. Rector/University of Alaska Anchorage and WIYN/AURA/NSFLinks to the NOAO image release of NGC 281.

Watch an animation zooming in from ground-based images of NGC 281 to the Hubble Heritage image of the Bok globules.

Zoom around the Hubble image of NGC 281's Bok globules.