globular clusters – Astronomy Now

Hubble spots thousands of globular clusters in Coma galaxy group

2 December 2018 Astronomy Now

Archived images collected by the Hubble Space Telescope across a variety of projects allowed astronomers to spot more than 22,000 globular clusters in the Coma galaxy cluster.

Hubble peers into a globular cluster on the outskirts of the LMC

28 November 2018 Astronomy Now

An unusual globular cluster on the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud, seen here in an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, features an unusual mix of young an old stars, possibly the result of an encounter with a giant gas cloud in the distant past.

A glorious globular, M22 delights amateurs and professionals alike

23 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Messier 22 is a stunning sight in even small telescopes, but nothing rivals this spectacular view of the globular cluster’s crowded heart as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in visible and infrared light.

The Hubble Space Telescope looks into the heart of M13

26 August 2018 Astronomy Now

The great globular cluster in Hercules, M13, was first noted by western astronomers in 1714 when Edmund Halley described it as a “little patch” that “shews it self to the naked Eye.” The Hubble Space Telescope takes it to another level.

Messier spotted the first extra-galactic globular cluster in 1778

10 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Globular clusters orbiting the core of the Milky Way are favourite targets for amateur astronomers, especially those in the Messier catalogue. It turns out one of them is the first extra-galactic globular ever discovered, something Charles Messier could not have imagined.

A jewel box of brilliant suns, M79 delights the eye

9 June 2018 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope captures a striking view of the globular cluster M79, a vast assembly of some 150,000 stars in the constellation Lepus that includes, like all clusters of its type, some of the oldest suns in the Milky Way.

Newly discovered stars shed light on Milky Way’s formation

23 November 2016 Astronomy Now

An astronomer from Liverpool John Moores University has discovered a new family of stars in the core of the Milky Way which provides new insights into the early stages of the galaxy’s formation. The discovery has shed new light on the origins of globular clusters formed at the beginning of the Milky Way’s history.

Hubble reveals NGC 362, a young globular cluster

24 October 2016 Astronomy Now

Globular clusters offer some of the most spectacular sights in the night sky. These ornate spheres contain hundreds of thousands of stars, and reside in the outskirts of galaxies. The Milky Way contains over 150 such clusters — and the example shown in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, named NGC 362, is one of the most unusual ones.

Hubble reveals a galaxy fit to burst

18 July 2016 Astronomy Now

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the vibrant core of the galaxy NGC 3125, approximately 50 million light-years away. Discovered by John Herschel in 1835, NGC 3125 is a great example of a starburst galaxy — a galaxy in which unusually high numbers of new stars are forming, springing to life within intensely hot clouds of gas.

Globular clusters make new stars by ‘adopting’ stray cosmic gases

27 January 2016 Astronomy Now

An international research team of astronomers has, for the first time, found young populations of stars within globular clusters that have apparently developed courtesy of star-forming gas flowing in from outside of the clusters themselves. This method stands in contrast to the conventional idea of the clusters’ initial stars shedding gas as they age in order to spark future rounds of star birth.