Globular Cluster NGC 6652 tagged posts

Hubble Glimpses Globular Cluster NGC 6652

A spherical cluster of stars with a bright core, and stars spread out to the edges gradually giving way to an empty, dark background. A few stars with cross-shaped diffraction spikes appear larger and stand out in front.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto

The glittering, glitzy contents of the globular cluster NGC 6652 sparkle in this star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The core of the cluster is suffused with the pale blue light of countless stars, and a handful of particularly bright foreground stars are adorned with crisscrossing diffraction spikes. NGC 6652 lies in our own Milky Way galaxy in the constellation Sagittarius, just under 30,000 light-years from Earth and only 6,500 light-years from the galactic center.

Globular clusters are stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters containing anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of stars...

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