Star light, star bright 🌟⁣:

⁣A densely-packed globular cluster lies about 157,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) captured by @NASAHubble. Globular clusters are very stable, tightly bound clusters of thousands or even millions of stars. Their stability means that they can last a long time, and therefore globular clusters are often studied to investigate potentially very old stellar populations. ⁣

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Research from 2017 estimates that this globular cluster probably clocks in at around 11.6 billion years old. Even though this is only a couple billion years younger than the universe itself – this globular is the youngest cluster in their sample. All of the LMC globular clusters studied in the same work were found to be older, with four of them over 13 billion years old. ⁣

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This globular cluster is as interesting as it is beautiful with its highly concentrated population of stars. The night sky would look very different from the perspective of an inhabitant of a planet orbiting one of the stars in a globular cluster’s center: the sky would appear to be stuffed full of stars, in a stellar environment that is thousands of times more crowded than our own.⁣

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Image Description: A dense cluster of stars. It is brightest and most crowded in the center, where the stars are mostly a cool white color. Moving out towards the edges the stars become more spread out and reddish until a noticeable ‘edge’ to the cluster is reached. Beyond that edge there are still many stars, more disorganized and seen on a black background. Some stars appear to be in front of the cluster.⁣

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Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini

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09 December 2023