A ten billion year stellar dance

Esahubble_potw1231a_1024

esahubble_potw1231a July 30th, 2012

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this delightful view of the crowded stellar encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a globular cluster. Mutual gravitational attraction amongst a clusters hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars keeps stellar members in check, allowing globular clusters to hang together for many billions of years. Astronomers can measure the ages of globular clusters by looking at the light of their constituent stars. The chemical elements leave signatures in this light, and the starlight reveals that globular clusters' stars typically contain fewer heavy elements, such as carbon, oxygen and iron, than stars like the Sun. Since successive generations of stars gradually create these elements through nuclear fusion, stars having fewer of them are relics of earlier epochs in the Universe. Indeed, the stars in globular clusters rank among the oldest on record, dating back more than 10 billion years. More than 150 of these objects surround our Milky Way galaxy. On a galactic scale, globular clusters are indeed not all that big. In Messier 68's case, its constituent stars span a volume of space with a diameter of little more than a hundred light-years. The disc of the Milky Way, on the other hand, extends over some 100 000 light-years or more. Messier 68 is located about 33 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra (The Female Water Snake). French astronomer Charles Messier notched the object as the sixty-eighth entry in his famous catalogue in 1780. Hubble added Messier 68 to its own impressive list of cosmic targets in this image using the Wide Field Camera of Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys. The image, which combines visible and infrared light, has a field of view of approximately 3.4 by 3.4 arcminutes.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1231a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
M 68
Subject - Milky Way
Star > Grouping > Cluster > Globular
Esahubble_potw1231a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 12h 39m 27.9s
DEC = -26° 44’ 33.1”
Orientation
North is 37.6° CCW
Field of View
3.4 x 3.5 arcminutes
Constellation
Hydra

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red Hubble (ACS) Infrared (I) -
Pseudocolor Hubble (ACS) Optical (V+I) -
Blue Hubble (ACS) Optical (V) -
Esahubble_potw1231a_1280
×
ID
potw1231a
Subject Category
B.3.6.4.2  
Subject Name
M 68
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release Date
2012-07-30T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1231a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS, ACS, ACS
Color Assignment
Red, Pseudocolor, Blue
Band
Infrared, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
I, V+I, V
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
189.866172104, -26.7425359494
Reference Dimension
4083.0, 4188.0
Reference Pixel
2041.0, 2094.0
Scale
-1.38559509685e-05, 1.38559509685e-05
Rotation
37.559999999999839
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1231a
Metadata Date
2012-04-30T18:10:10+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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