Image: Hubble glimpses a glittering gathering of stars

This glittering gathering of stars is Pismis 26, a globular star cluster positioned about 23,000 light-years away. Many 1000’s of stars gleam brightly in opposition to the black backdrop of the picture, with some brighter crimson and blue stars positioned alongside the outskirts of the cluster. The Armenian astronomer Paris Pismis first found the cluster in 1959 on the Tonantzintla Observatory in Mexico, granting it the twin identify Tonantzintla 2.

Pismis 26 is positioned within the constellation Scorpius close to the galactic bulge, which is an space close to the middle of our galaxy that holds a dense, spheroidal grouping of stars that surrounds a black hole. On account of its location inside the dust-heavy bulge, a course of referred to as “reddening” happens, the place dust scatters shorter wavelength blue mild whereas longer wavelength crimson mild passes via. Reddening distorts the obvious coloration of cosmic objects. Globular clusters are teams of stars held collectively by mutual gravitational attraction. They include 1000’s of tightly packed stars and seem nearly spherical in form. Astronomers just lately used NASA’s Hubble Area Telescope to check seen and infrared light from Pismis 26 to find out the cluster’s reddening, age, and metallicity.

The celebs of Pismis 26 have excessive metallicity, which means they include a excessive fraction of parts heavier than hydrogen and helium, essentially the most plentiful parts within the universe. Particularly, the celebs are wealthy within the aspect nitrogen, which is typical of stars in bulge clusters and has led scientists to imagine that populations of differently-aged stars are current within the cluster. Pismis 26 has additionally possible misplaced a large portion of its mass over time because of a gravitational drive referred to as the robust internal galaxy tidal area, which the internal galaxy exerts on star clusters within the galactic bulge, inflicting their outer layers to drag away. Researchers estimate the age of the cluster to be 12 billion years previous.