Sunny Priyan
The cluster is located in the constellation Mensa in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way with many star-forming regions.
NGC 2031 contains a sizable population of Cepheid variable stars (at least 14), which are stars that brighten and dim periodically.
With some observations taken from Earth, scientists estimate the distance of NGC 2031 as roughly 150,000 light-years from Earth.
Blue stragglers, formed from the merger of two old red stars, shine with greater mass and a bluer hue, a theory confirmed by Hubble’s imaging of the 47 Tucanae cluster.
NGC 2031 is estimated to be 140 million years old and has a mass more than 3,000 times that of our Sun.
Its crowded location causes 'stellar contamination,' where nearby stars influence the measurements of objects being studied.