A sky full of stars

Located approximately 22 000 light-years away in the constellation of Musca (The Fly), this tightly packed collection of stars — known as a globular cluster — goes by the name of NGC 4833. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the dazzling stellar group in all its glory.

NGC 4833 is one of the over 150 globular clusters known to reside within the Milky Way. These objects are thought to contain some of the oldest stars in our galaxy. Studying these ancient cosmic clusters can help astronomers to unravel how a galaxy formed and evolved, and give an idea of the galaxy’s age.

Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA

Wide-field view of the newly discovered globular cluster VVV CL001 

Credit: ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin 

NGC 5286 and M Centauri

NGC 5286 is a globular cluster located approximately 36,000 light years away in the southern constellation Centaurus. It appears very close to the naked eye star M Centauri (magnitude 4.6).

Credit: Rolf Olsen

M2 Globular Star Cluster - with Ruby Red Carbon Star 

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2015 June 20 

Hubble’s Messier 5 

“Beautiful Nebula discovered between the Balance [Libra] & the Serpent [Serpens] …” begins the description of the 5th entry in 18th century astronomer Charles Messier’s famous catalog of nebulae and star clusters. Though it appeared to Messier to be fuzzy and round and without stars, Messier 5 (M5) is now known to be a globular star cluster, 100,000 stars or more, bound by gravity and packed into a region around 165 light-years in diameter. It lies some 25,000 light-years away. 

Roaming the halo of our galaxy, globular star clusters are ancient members of the Milky Way. M5 is one of the oldest globulars, its stars estimated to be nearly 13 billion years old. The beautiful star cluster is a popular target for Earthbound telescopes. Of course, deployed in low Earth orbit on April 25, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has also captured its own stunning close-up view that spans about 20 light-years near the central region of M5. Even close to its dense core at the left, the cluster’s aging red and blue giant stars and rejuvenated blue stragglers stand out in yellow and blue hues in the sharp color image.