From the human point of view, stars are the most important objects in the universe; we don't need galaxies or nebulae, just whatever it takes to put our bodies together and warm the planet. The solar system could be winging it all on its own half way to Andromeda and all we would notice is no stars in the night sky and two huge galaxies on oposite sides of the sky. We depend on a lot of trace elements to make us live and breath and anything heavier than iron is made in stars, and most of it is made when a star dies in a supernova.

From a human astrophotographer point of view, stars make dull pictures. All they do is shine, some brightly and some less so. Globular cluster have interest, but open clusters just aren't exciting. Two open clusters close together brightens up the view a lot. Here are two such clusters - NGC 869 and NGC 884. Both of these clusters are around 7500 light years away, and close enogh togther that the stars in the two clusters appear to merge territory in places. NGC 869 has a mass of 4,700 solar masses and NGC 884 weighs in at 3,700 solar masses; both clusters are surrounded with a very extensive halo of stars, with a total mass for the complex of at least 20,000 solar masses. Based on their individual stars, the clusters are relatively young, both 14 million years old. In comparison, the Pleiades have an estimated age ranging from 75 million years to 150 million years. There are more than 300 blue-white super-giant stars in each of the clusters. The clusters are also blueshifted, with NGC 869 approaching Earth at a speed of 39 km/s (24 mi/s) and NGC 884 approaching at a similar speed of 38 km/s (24 mi/s).

One wonders how two such clusters formed so closely together - why gravity didn't pull them into one entity from the start? Or perhaps it did, and some passing large mass swept a path through the single cluster and left it as two?

Nobody knows!