Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Hubble Space Telescope snaps sparkling globular cluster near the heart of our galaxy

Georgina Torbet
By

Stars shine like diamonds in this week’s image from the Hubble Space Telescope, which shows globular cluster Terzan 9.

Located in the constellation of Sagittarius, Terzan 9 is relatively close to the center of the Milky Way. “Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groups of tens of thousands to millions of stars,” Hubble scientists explain. “As this image demonstrates, the hearts of globular clusters are densely packed with stars. Terzan 9 is dotted with so many glittering stars that it resembles a sea of sequins, or a vast treasure chest crammed with gold.”

This star-studded image shows the globular cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center of the Milky Way.
This star-studded image shows the globular cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center of the Milky Way. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this glittering scene using its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen

The center of the Milky Way, called the galactic bulge, is a region rich with stars. Most of the Milky Way, like most spiral galaxies, is a flat wheel shape, but in the center, the bulge sticks out from that plane. The stars which make up the bulge are different from those lying in the plane, as those in the middle tend to be older and redder.

Recommended Videos

There is also a lot of interstellar dust in the Milky Way’s galactic bulge, which makes it harder to study this region as the dust obscures the view. “This dust makes globular clusters near the galaxy’s center difficult to study, as it absorbs starlight and can even change the apparent colors of stars in these clusters,” the Hubble scientists explain. “Hubble’s sensitivity at both visible and infrared wavelengths allows astronomers to measure how star colors change due to interstellar dust. Knowing a star’s true color and brightness allows astronomers to estimate its age, and thereby estimate the globular cluster’s age.”

Related

Within the galactic bulge, there aren’t only stars. At the center of almost all galaxies like supermassive black holes, which shape the bulges around them. The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, was recently imaged in an international effort that used radio telescopes to detect the glowing gas located around the black hole. The region immediately around this black hole is chaotic and busy, with threads of dust and gas as well as stars and even some strange stretchy bodies called G objects.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
One galaxy, two views: see a comparison of images from Hubble and Webb
The peculiar galaxy NGC 3256 takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This distorted galaxy is the wreckage of a head-on collision between two spiral galaxies which likely occurred 500 million years ago, and it is studded with clumps of young stars which were formed as gas and dust from the two galaxies collided.

It might not seem obvious why astronomers need multiple different powerful space telescopes. Surely a more powerful telescope is better than a less powerful one? So why are there multiple different telescopes in orbit, either around Earth or around the sun?

The answer is to do with two main factors. One is the telescope's field of view, meaning how much of the sky it looks at. Some telescopes are useful for looking at large areas of the sky in less detail, working as survey telescopes to identify objects for further research or to look at the universe on a large scale -- like the recently launched Euclid mission. While others, like the Hubble Space Telescope, look at small areas of the sky in great detail, which is useful for studying particular objects.

Read more
Hubble image of the week shows an unusual jellyfish galaxy
The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing a colorful star-forming disk surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust. A handful of foreground bright stars with crisscross diffraction spikes stands out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image. JO206 lies over 700 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

This week's image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an unusual type of galaxy named for its aquatic look-alike: a jellyfish.

The jellyfish galaxy JO206 is shown below in an image taken using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. Located 700 million light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius, this image of the galaxy shows both the bright center of the galaxy and its long tendrils reaching out toward the bottom right. It is these tendrils that give jellyfish galaxies their names, and they are formed through a process called ram pressure stripping.

Read more
A sparkling field of stars cluster together in Hubble image
This image shows just a portion of M55, the cluster as a whole appears spherical because the stars’ intense gravitational attraction pulls them together. Hubble’s clear view above Earth’s atmosphere resolves individual stars in this cluster. Ground-based telescopes can also resolve individual stars in M55, but fewer stars are visible.

A sea of stars sparkles in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. Showing an tremendous cluster of stars called a globular cluster, this view is located in the galaxy Messier 55.

A globular cluster is a group of stars which is tens of thousands or even millions of stars, and which is held together by gravity. That's why these clusters tend to form spherical shapes as the forces of gravity hold the cluster together.

Read more