A beautiful image showing a sparkling jumble of stars has been released from
the Hubble Space Telescope.
A new photo
released by Nasa revealing a multi-coloured cluster of more than 100,000
stars has dazzled astronomers and fans of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The image shows the globular cluster known as Messier 5, or M5. In the
description accompanying the picture, Nasa quotes a description from the
18th century astronomer Charles Messier's catalogue of clusters and other
nebulae. For this particular cluster, the fifth described in his catalogue,
Messier began by writing "Beautiful Nebula discovered between the
Balance [Libra] & the Serpent [Serpens] ..."
The description is notable because it seems that M5 appeared to Messier to be
a nebula, a cloud of space dust and gas, rather than a cluster of stars. It
wasn’t until space observation technology was developed further that the
definition was changed.
Nasa explained: “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.”
The latest image of the M5 was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope which
captured a stunning close-up shot that shows around 20 light years near the
central region of M5. It is believed to be one of the oldest globular
clusters, estimated at nearly 13 billion years old.
No comments:
Post a Comment