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Credit & Copyright: Johan B. Monell
Explanation:
Globular clusters once ruled the
Milky Way.
Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed,
perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed
our Galaxy.
Today, there are less than 200 left.
Over the eons,
many globular clusters were destroyed by repeated fateful encounters with each other
or the Galactic center.
Surviving relics are older than any
Earth fossil,
older than any other structures in our Galaxy,
and limit the universe itself in raw age.
There are few, if any,
young globular clusters in our
Milky Way Galaxy because
conditions are not ripe for more to form.
The featured video shows what it might
look like to go from the Earth to the globular cluster
Terzan 5,
ending with
a picture
of the cluster taken with the
Hubble Space Telescope.
This
star cluster
has been
found to contain not only stars formed in the early days of our
Milky Way Galaxy,
but also,
quite surprisingly,
others that formed in a separate burst of star formation about 7 billion years later.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: globular cluster
Publications with words: globular cluster
See also: