View allAll Photos Tagged Globularcluster
Deep in the Southern sky, right next to the Small Magellanic Cloud and just 18° from the South Celestial Pole, lies this magnificent globular cluster.
With millions of stars, 47-Tucanae is the second largest globular cluster in the sky after Omega Centauri.
This 51 minute image was shot from my home in surburbia with my Skywatcher ED120 telescope and ZWO ASI071 camera.
Object Details:
Designation: 47-Tucanae, NGC 104, Caldwell 106.
Constellation: Tucana.
Visual magnitude: +3.95
Apparent size: 50 arc-min
Diameter: 213 light years.
Distance: 15,000 light years.
Altitude during exposure: 48° above southern horizon.
Also in image: NGC 121, a more distant globular cluster (left, bottom).
M53 (ou NGC 5024) est un amas globulaire situé dans la constellation de la Chevelure de Bérénice. Il a été découvert par l'astronome allemand Johann Elert Bode en 1775.
NGC 5053 est un amas globulaire situé dans la constellation de la Chevelure de Bérénice à environ 21,5k a.l. de la Terre. Il a été découvert par l'astronome germano-britannique William Herschel en 1784.
Messier 53 (also known as M53 or NGC 5024) is a globular cluster in the Coma Berenices constellation. It was discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1775.
NGC 5053 is a globular cluster in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on March 14, 1784.
(sources: Wikipedia)
= Acquisition info =
William Optics Zenithstar 73ii (FL 430mm)
Risingcam IMX571 color
iOptron CEM26 + iPolar
ZWO ASI224MC + WO Uniguide 32/120
NINA & PHD2
= Séances photos =
- 7 mars 2024 : Filtre L-Pro / 120 x 80
= Traitement/processing =
Siril & Gimp
@Astrobox 2.0 / St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec
AstroM1
(rsi1x.2)
No doubt about it – the largest, most massive and most glorious Milky Way globular cluster in the entire sky is Omega Centauri!
I’ve imaged this stunning object several times before but this is the first time using the ZWO ASI071 camera.
Object Details:
Designation: Caldwell 80, NGC 5139.
Constellation: Centaurus.
Visual magnitude: +3.7
Apparent size: 55′
Diameter: 271 light years.
Distance: 17,000 light years.
Altitude: 67° above SE horizon.
Image:
Exposure: 14.75 min. (10 frames @ 88.5 sec).
Gain: 152.
Date: 2019-06-22.
Stars shine over fields of poppies and other flowers in Southern California's Antelope Valley.
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Canon EF16-35mm f/2.8 II USM
Photo credit to Domiriel
La Comète C/2017 K2 (PanStarrs) passant près de l'Amas globulaire Messier 10 (M10, NGC6254) dans la constellation d'Ophiuchus (Serpentaire).
Wikipedia: Comète C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)
-- est une comète non périodique qui suit une orbite hyperbolique, et qui a été observée pour la première fois le 12 mai 2013 par l'observatoire Canada-France-Hawaï (CFHT) à Hawaï. Elle a été repérée et caractérisée en mai 2017 par le programme d'exploration Pan-STARRS, piloté depuis l'observatoire du Haleakalā, toujours à Hawaï.
-- is an Oort cloud comet with an inbound hyperbolic orbit, discovered in May 2017 at a distance beyond the orbit of Saturn when it was 16 AU (2.4 billion km) from the Sun.
Nikon D5300 + Zenithstar 73
iOptron CEM26 + iPolar
SVBony CLSfilter
ZWO ASI224MC + WO Uniguide 120mm
35 x 2 min -- ISO800
AstroM1
(r2a.2com)
Globular cluster Messier 92. Imaged from London on the 30th May 2020.
Celestron Edge HD11 scope and Canon EOS 6D camera.
30 minutes integration (18x10 seconds)
In the place of fireworks, looking like a glittering swarm of buzzing bees, here are the stars of globular cluster NGC 6440 shining brightly in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. The cluster is located some 28,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer.
Globular clusters like NGC 6440 are roughly spherical, tightly packed collections of stars that live on the outskirts of galaxies. They hold hundreds of thousands to millions of stars that average about one light-year apart, but they can be as close together as the size of our solar system.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, C. Pallanca and F. Ferraro (Universits Di Bologna), and M. van Kerkwijk (University of Toronto); Processing: G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
#NASA #NASAMarshall #NASAGoddard #ESA #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #globularcluster
Messier 15 (M15 or NGC 7078) is a bright globular cluster located in the constellation Pegasus. The age of this cluster is estimated to be 12 billion years, ranking it as one of the oldest known globular clusters.
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro, Antares Focal Reducer, 32 x 60 second at 0C with darks and flats, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using ZWO AAP and processed using PixInsight. Image date: August 2, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Introducing the Hercules Globular Cluster aka the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (Messier 13 or NGC 6205). I haven’t stopped marveling at the thought of so many stars packed into so relatively dense a structure as this. Or even that something like this is possible.
This bright gob o’ light is a globular cluster comprised of several hundred thousand stars in the constellation of Hercules. A globular cluster is a tightly packed group of old stars which are packed closely in a symmetrical form. Globular clusters formed from giant molecular clouds, or huge masses of gas which form from stars as they collapse. Globular clusters are older structures relative to the universe as less free gas is available today for formation of globular clusters than was the case when the universe was denser.
In 1716, English astronomer Edmond Halley noted of the Hercules Globular Cluster, “This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent.” To the human eye, under sufficiently dark skies with binoculars, the Hercules Globular Cluster looks like a dim and somewhat hazy star. The Hercules cluster is one of the brightest globular clusters visible in the northern hemisphere and is about 145 light years in diameter (our Milky Way is over 100,000 light years) by way of comparison and is 22,180 light years from earth.
Technical Details:
This photograph was created using a large quantity of individual exposures captured with a telescope, astronomy camera, and an equatorial mount. Processing was done in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop.
I didn’t capture these exposures with any particular plan in mind. I just had so much data on this target that I went back and used a lot of my best data to create this final image. It would have been sensible to produce this image with one telescope (e.g. the 120 ED) and camera (e.g. 2600MC or 2600MM combining sessions of luminance and RGB). A bright globular cluster also does not require so much integration time.
CEM-70g, Esprit 120 ED + APEX-L, 183MC, N/A
- 2021-01-11, 2021-01-14, 2021-01-15
- 42x10s and 38x30s, Bortle 7-8
CEM-70g, Esprit 120 ED, 2600MM, Astronomik L2
- 2021-02-25, 2021-03-01, 2021-03-05
- 28x10s and 78x30s, Bortle 7-8
CEM-40EC, Esprit 80 ED, 2600MC, N/A
- 2021-03-12, 56x120s, Bortle 7-8
CEM-40EC, Esprit 80 ED, 183MC, N/A
- 2021-04-01, 125x30s, Bortle 7-8
CEM-40EC, RASA-8, 2600MM, Astronomik L1
- 2021-04-19, 86x30s, Bortle 4
CEM-40EC, Esprit 80ED, 2600MM, RTU
- 2021-04-28, 87x60s, Bortle 7-8
CEM-70g, Esprit 120ED, 2600MM, Astronomik L2
- 2021-05-14, 30x60s, Bortle 4
Total Integration Time
6 hours, 44 minutes, 10 seconds
Separate sessions calibrated with darks, flats (typically sky flats), and dark flats. Sessions were stacked, background light gradients extracted, calibrated, and then combined into a few monochrome masters (combined selectively for the best result) and a series of color images used for color.
Photographs captured in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Antelope Island State Park, Utah
Messier 13 - The Hercules Globular Cluster
Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello (Oria Amateur Astrophysical Observatory - OAAO)
J2000 RA 16h 41m 41.24s Dec +36° 27′ 35.5″
Messier 13 (M13), or NGC 6205, is a globular cluster of about 300,000 stars in Hercules, discovered by Edmond Halley in 1714, and catalogued by Charles Messier on June 1, 1764.
M13 is about 145 light-years in diameter and at 25,100 light-years away from Earth.
The Arecibo message of 1974, which contained encoded information about the human race, DNA, atomic numbers, Earth's position and other information, was beamed from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope towards M13 as an experiment in contacting potential extraterrestrial civilizations in the cluster.
127ED f/9 @600mm progressive stack
M15 Globular cluster and surrounding dust clouds or IFN in the constellation Pegasus. At an estimated 13 billion years old, it is one of the oldest known globular clusters. 36,000 light-years away. Messier 15 an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. It's one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way. Its diameter is about 200 light-years, but more than half its stars are packed into the central 10 light-years or so, making one of the densest concentrations of stars known. Hubble based meassurements of the increasing velocities of M15's central stars are evidence that a massive Black Hole resides at the center of the dense cluster.
Esprit 120, FL 840mm, IoptronCEM70 mt, QHY268M camera, Optolong LRGB filters.
Optolong Blue 2": 74×300″(6h 10′)
Optolong Green 2": 53×300″(4h 25′)
Optolong Luminance 2": 93×300″(7h 45′)
Optolong Red 2": 46×300″(3h 50′)
Integration:22h 10′
An unguided picture of the globular star cluster M13 (The Great Cluster) in Hercules taken through a Celestron 130mm f/5 reflecting telescope using a ZWOASI183 MC planetary camera. 30 thirty second images were combined and processed with DeepSkyStacker, Gimp, and Lightroom.
In this 2008 X-ray image, the giant elliptical galaxy M87 reveals evidence for a series of outbursts from the central supermassive black hole. The loops and bubbles in the hot, X-ray emitting gas are relics of small outbursts from close to the black hole. Other interesting features in M87 are narrow filaments of X-ray emission, which may be due to hot gas trapped by magnetic fields. One of these filaments is over 100,000 light years long, and extends below and to the right of the center of M87 in almost a straight line.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/W. Forman et al.
#NASAMarshall #Chandra #NASAChandra #ChandraXrayObservatory #galaxy
M72 (NGC 6981) is a globular cluster in Aquarius.
Shot with RGB filters from my backyard in Long Beach, CA.
R: 16 30 s exposures
G: 30 30 s exposures
B: 25 30 s exposures
All taken with an Atik 414-EX mono camera on a Celestron Edge HD 925 at a focal length of 535 mm with Hyperstar. RGB filters are from Optolong.
Pre-processing in Nebulosity; registration, stacking, channel combination, and processing in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.
The muted red tones of the globular cluster Liller 1 are partially obscured in this image by a dense scattering of piercingly blue stars. In fact, it is thanks to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that we are able to see Liller 1 so clearly in this image, because the WFC3 is sensitive to wavelengths of light that the human eye can’t detect. Liller 1 is only 30,000 light-years from Earth – relatively neighborly in astronomical terms – but it lies within the Milky Way’s ‘bulge’, the dense and dusty region at our galaxy’s center. Because of that, Liller 1 is heavily obscured from view by interstellar dust, which scatters visible light (particularly blue light) very effectively. Fortunately, some infrared and red visible light can pass through these dusty regions. WFC3 is sensitive to both visible and near-infrared (infrared that is close to the visible) wavelengths, allowing us to see through the obscuring clouds of dust, and providing this spectacular view of Liller 1.
Liller 1 is a particularly interesting globular cluster, because unlike most of its kind, it contains a mix of very young and very old stars. Globular clusters typically house only old stars, some nearly as old as the universe itself. Liller 1 instead contains at least two distinct stellar populations with remarkably different ages: the oldest one is 12 billion years old, and the youngest component is just 1-2 billion years old. This led astronomers to conclude that this stellar system was able to form stars over an extraordinarily long period of time.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Ferraro
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-gazes-at-a...
The globular cluster Terzan 2 in the constellation Scorpio is featured in this observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars found in a wide variety of galaxies. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters a regular, spherical shape. As this image of Terzan 2 illustrates, the hearts of globular clusters are crowded with a multitude of glittering stars.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #gsfc #globularcluster #starcluster
The Small Magellanic Cloud (NGC 292) visible from the southern hemisphere, a companion/satellite galaxy of our Milkyway 203,000LY away.
Exposed in LRGB with H-Alpha and OIII color at 150mm focal length through an Sigma 150mm f2.8 prime lens, QHY268M camera, guided with a 80mm refractor at 500mm FL and tracked on a hypertuned CGEM mount.
The 15% narrowband data screened over the LRGB image emphasises the nebulosity within the satellite galaxy.
Total exposure time was 19 hours and 4 minutes.
The galactic center is a busy place. In this image, globular cluster M22 floats amidst dense star clouds of the Milky Way, partially obscured by lanes of dark dust.
Telescope: Tele Vue 76mm f/6.3 refractor with 0.8x reducer
Camera: Canon XSi (450D)
Mount: Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO
Integration: 21 minutes (7 x 180 sec)
Software: PixInsight 1.8, Adobe Lightroom
Hacia el núcleo galáctico de la Via láctea.
Español:
La Vía láctea es una galaxia espiral tipo SBbc, es decir una galaxia espiral barrada intermedia. En esta captura detallada de la vía láctea realizada en las Melosas, Chile, podemos encontrar diversidad de objetos astronómicos del espacio profundo, desde nebulosas oscuras, nebulosas de formación estelar, de emisión y de reflexión, y una basta cantidad de estrellas, en la parte mas brillante de la galaxia esta el núcleo, un pseudobulbo donde se encuentra un gigante dormido, Sagitario A*, el agujero negro supermasivo central de nuestra galaxia.
Reprocesado de datos capturados en Las Melosas el pasado 13/04/2018.
Autor: Mario Poblete
Taken w/ Skywatcher Evostar Pro 80 ED (w/.85x reducer/corrector & QHYCCD Polemaster), Skywatcher EQM-35, Nikon D7500.
65 lights x 60 s @ ISO 800, ~45 dark, ~45 flat, ~100 bias, stacked in DSS and post-processed in Photoshop
NGC 6752, also known as the Great Peacock Globular or the Pavo Cluster, is a globular cluster in the constellation Pavo.
It is the fourth-brightest globular cluster in the sky, after Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae and Messier 22, respectively. It is best seen from June to October in the Southern Hemisphere.
Imaged using a 8" SCT (at the native 2032mm focal length), with a QHY268M camera.
The total exposure time of this image for all of the LRGB filters was 6 hours and 2 minutes.
Exposures: L:34x300s @ FW:31, R:20x120s G:19x180s B:19x300s @ HCG:62/OFS:25
About this image:
A two panel widefield mosaic of a section of the large Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex, including IC4603, IC4604 and the Globular Cluster Messier 4 (M4). Rho Ophiuchi is a dark nebula of gas and dust that is located 1° south of the star ρ Ophiuchi of the constellation Ophiuchus (close to the red Supergiant star Antares).
About the Interstellar Cloud Colors:
Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. The atoms of gaseous clouds that are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Back-lit dust clouds block light and appear dark. Antares (a red super-giant star, and one of the brighter stars in the night sky), lights up the yellow-red dust clouds. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula. Interstellar clouds are even more colorful than we can see in visible light, emitting light across a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
About the Star Colors:
Star colors vary from red, orange, yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.
Gear:
William Optics Star 71mm f/4.9 Imaging APO Refractor Telescope.
William Optics 50mm Finder Scope.
Celestron SkySync GPS Accessory.
Orion Mini 50mm Guide Scope.
Orion StarShoot Autoguider.
Celestron AVX Mount.
QHYCCD PoleMaster.
Celestron StarSense.
Canon 60Da DSLR.
Astronomik Clip-In CLS Light Pollution Filter.
Tech:
Guiding in Open PHD 2.6.3.
Image acquisition in Sequence Generator Pro.
Lights/Subs:
18 x 180 sec. per mosaic panel.
ISO 3200 RGB (CLA FITS).
Calibration Frames:
30 x Bias/Offset.
30 x Darks.
30 x Flats & Dark Flats.
Image Acquisition:
Sequence Generator Pro with the Mosaic and Framing Wizard.
Plate Solving:
Astrometry.net ANSVR Solver via SGP.
Processing:
Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,
and finished in Photoshop.
Astrometry Info:
Annotated Sky Chart for this image.
Center RA, Dec: 245.705, -24.459
Center RA, hms: 16h 22m 49.215s
Center Dec, dms: -24° 27' 31.791"
Size: 5.31 x 2.18 deg
Radius: 2.872 deg
Pixel scale:9.35 arcsec/pixel
Orientation:Up is 97 degrees E of N
View this image in the World Wide Telescope.
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The globular cluster Terzan 2 in the constellation Scorpio features in this observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Globular clusters are stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars found in a wide variety of galaxies. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters a regular, spherical shape. As a result, images of the hearts of globular clusters, such as this observation of Terzan 2, are crowded with a multitude of glittering stars.
Hubble used both its Advanced Camera for Surveys and its Wide Field Camera 3 in this observation, taking advantage of the complementary capabilities of these instruments. Despite having only one primary mirror, Hubble’s design allows multiple instruments to be used to inspect astronomical objects. Light from distant astronomical objects enters Hubble and is collected by the telescope's 2.4-metre primary mirror; it is then reflected off the secondary mirror into the depths of the telescope, where smaller mirrors can direct light into individual instruments.
Each of the four operational instruments on Hubble is a masterpiece of astronomical engineering in its own right, and contains an intricate array of mirrors and other optical elements to remove any aberrations or optical imperfections from observations, as well as filters which allow astronomers to observe specific wavelength ranges. The mirrors inside each instrument also correct for the slight imperfection of Hubble's primary mirror. The end result is a crystal-clear observation, such as this glittering portrait of Terzan 2.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen; CC BY 4.0
Globular cluster Messier 3 imaged from London on the 28th May 2020.
Celestron Edge HD11 scope & Canon EOS 6D camera. 1 hour integration (360x10 seconds)
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.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groups of tens of thousands to millions of stars. 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 starry snapshot is from a Hubble program investigating globular clusters located toward the heart of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way’s central region holds a tightly packed group of stars known as the galactic bulge, which is rich in interstellar dust. 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. 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.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #gsfc #starcluster
M 92 Globular Cluster in Hercules LRGB
Messier 92 is a globular cluster in the constellation of Hercules. So Hercules has a pair of spectacular clusters!
M 92 is about 26,000 light years from Earth, only a little farther away than M 13 The Great Hercules Cluster.
It is one of the bright globular clusters in the northern hemisphere, but it is often overlooked because of its proximity to the spectacular M 13 Hercules Cluster that I imaged a few days prior to this image.
I would recommend looking at this cluster in a telescope if possible as it truly shines bright light diamonds in the sky.
It’s interesting to note that M 92 is approaching us at 112 km per second!
A single night of imaging in May 2023 from my home in Gérgal, Spain. Taken during almost a full Moon at 96%.
A higher resolution image with imaging details can be found on my Astrobin page at: astrob.in/full/otud5v/0/
Thank you for looking.
Technical summary:
Captured: 7-05-2023
Imaging Sessions: 1
Location: Gérgal, Andalucía, Spain
Bortle Class: 4
Total Integration: 2h 8m
Filters:
Red 23x 60s 23m BIN 2 Gain 100 0C SQM 20.1
Green 21x 60s 21m BIN 2 Gain 100 0C SQM 20.1
Blue 19x 60s 19m BIN 2 Gain 100 0C SQM 20.1
UV/IR 65x 60s 1h 5m BIN 2 Gain 100 0C SQM 20.1
Pixel Scale: 0.55 arcsec/pixel
Telescope: Celestron C11 Edge HD f/10 2800mm
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI 6200MM Pro
Guiding: ZWO OAG-L - ZWO ASI120MM Mini
Filters: Astronomik R, G, B, UV/IR
Mount: iOptron CEM120 EC
Computer: Minix NUC
Capture software: NINA, PHD2
Editing software: PixInsight, Adobe Lightroom
Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) is a globular cluster in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It is the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way with a diameter of ~150 light years and is one of the few globular clusters visible to the naked eye with an apparent magnitude of 3.9.
This image was taken with a 20” (510mm) f/4.4 CDK and an FLI ProLine PL09000 CCD at AAT Siding Spring in Australia. It consists of 25 x 60 seconds Luminance and 120 seconds for Red, Green and Blue channels.
The stars of this spectacular globular cluster are so densely packed they periodically collide with each other and create new stars. The 300,000 or so stars form a distinctive fuzzball in a suburban backyard telescope and contemporary astrophotography techniques resolve gold and blue stars as shown above.
Tech Stuff: Questar 3.5" scope at native focal length 1335 mm (f/15); first light for ZWO ASI 533MC; first light for RST-135E mount. 50 minutes of unguided 4 second exposures, processed in PixInsight. From my Bortle 8 yard 10 miles north of NYC.
This star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6638 in the constellation Sagittarius. The star-strewn observation highlights the density of stars at the heart of globular clusters, which are stable, tightly bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars. To capture the data in this image, Hubble used two of its cutting-edge astronomical instruments: Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Hubble revolutionised the study of globular clusters, as it is almost impossible to clearly distinguish the stars in globular clusters with ground-based telescopes. The blurring caused by Earth’s atmosphere makes it impossible to tell one star from another, but from Hubble’s location in low Earth orbit the atmosphere no longer poses a problem. As a result, Hubble has been used to study what kind of stars globular clusters are made up of, how they evolve, and the role of gravity in these dense systems.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will further our understanding of globular clusters by peering into those globular clusters that are currently obscured by dust. Webb will predominantly observe at infrared wavelengths, which are less affected by the gas and dust surrounding newborn stars. This will allow astronomers to inspect star clusters that are freshly formed, providing insights into stellar populations before they have a chance to evolve.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen; CC BY 4.0
This is a mosaic that I had mostly constructed in 2019. The area around Antares (brightest star, in the lower left) was too challenging for a straightforward approach, so I hoped to try some different optics or other approaches in 2020.
I did not get out to a dark sky site with my rig in 2020. Hmmmm...
A magnitude 1 star like Anatares star will bring out any oddities in your optical path. Regardless of where I put the star in the field, I got these strange Lissajous figures of light somewhere else in the frame. After trying to shoot with an 80mm refractor, I thought about taking a bunch of images with Antares in different places on the sensor. Then, maybe I could build the mosaic around where these odd ghosts were appearing.
Thankfully, that worked. All sub-frames for this mosaic are 90 s exposures with an Atik 314L+ color CCD on a HyperStar on a Celestron Edge HD 925. Stacks were used to construct 23 separate panels. Preprocessing was done in Nebulosity. Registration, stacking, and plate solving was in PixInsight, then Mosaic by Coordinates to put the panels together. Some additional processing in PI before moving over to Photoshop for the final tweaks.
What all is in this image? The lower left corner is Antares - a Type M1.5 Iab-Ib supergiant star. The brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, it is massive enough that it will end its existence with a core collapse supernova. It is actually a double star, with its companion being a B2.5 main sequence star. I have no chance of resolving the companion with this setup. To the right of Antares is M4 - the globular cluster that is nearest to the Earth, at about 2200 pc away. This is one way of understanding how you can't tell distances from brightness or visual appearances in space. Antares is only about 170 pc away - about 12 times closer. M4 (NGC 6121) is a gravitationally bound association of tens of thousands of older stars. Another globular cluster - NGC 6144 - is above and to the right of Antares. At 8500 pc, it is roughly 4 times more distant than M4. This cluster is also partially obscured by all of the dust in this region.
That dust appears bright blue around the star i 22 Sco in the upper left. This is a reflection nebula - the dust particles are the right size to preferentially scatter the blue light from the star. Portions of this dust complex fill most of the left half of this image.
The bright star in the upper right is Alniyat (σ Sco). The red glow associated with it is an emission nebula. The hydrogen in this nebula is hit with high energy photons that separate the electrons from their nuclei. As they recombine, the strongest visible wavelength produced is this characteristic red glow.
This glittering gathering of stars is Pismis 26, a globular star cluster located about 23,000 light-years away. Many thousands of stars gleam brightly against the black backdrop of the image, with some brighter red and blue stars located along the outskirts of the cluster. The Armenian astronomer Paris Pismis first discovered the cluster in 1959 at the Tonantzintla Observatory in Mexico, granting it the dual name Tonantzintla 2.
Pismis 26 is located in the constellation Scorpius near the galactic bulge, which is an area near the center of our galaxy that holds a dense, spheroidal grouping of stars that surrounds a black hole. Due to its location within the dust-heavy bulge, a process called “reddening” occurs, where dust scatters shorter wavelength blue light while longer wavelength red light passes through. Reddening distorts the apparent color of cosmic objects. Globular clusters are groups of stars held together by mutual gravitational attraction. They contain thousands of tightly packed stars and appear almost spherical in shape. Astronomers used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to study visible and infrared light from Pismis 26 to determine the cluster’s reddening, age, and metallicity.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and R. Cohen (Rutgers the State University of New Jersey); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
#NASA #NASAMarshall #NASAGoddard #ESA #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #globularcluster #starcluster
Globular Cluster Caldwell 81
=========================
Image exposure: 30 minutes
Image Size: Size: 77.1 x 51.4 arc-min
Image date: 2024-06-03
=========================
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The Dumbbell Nebula - Messier 27
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 135x60 seconds guided exposures, Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: May 15, 2023. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
10x 30s light frames ISO800. Canon EOS450D prime focus Skywatcher 150 Explorer. Integrated and processed in PixInsight and Photoshop CS5
Messier 15 (M15 or NGC 7078) is a bright globular cluster located in the constellation Pegasus. The age of this cluster is estimated to be 12 billion years, ranking it as one of the oldest known globular clusters.
Observation data (J2000 epoch)
Class: IV
Constellation: Pegasus
Right ascension: 21h 29m 58.33s
Declination: +12° 10′ 01.2″
Distance: 35.69 ± 0.43 kly
Apparent magnitude (V): 6.2
Apparent dimensions (V): 18′.0
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, Antares Focal Reducer, ZWO ASI290MC and ASI071MC-Pro, ZWO AAPlus, ZWO EAF, 50 x 60 seconds at 0C plus darks and flats, processed using PixInsight and DSS. Image Date: June 5, 2022. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Messier 13, also referred to as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, is one of the brightest and best known globular clusters in the northern skies. It shines at a magnitude of 5.8, is about 22,200 light years away and contains an estimated 300,000 stars.
Tech Specs: Sky Watcher Esprit 120ED, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro running at 0C, Celestron CGEM-DX Mount Pier Mounted, ZWO EAF, 44 x 60 second exposures with dark/flat frames, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope, controlled with a ZWO ASIAir Pro. Image date: May 17, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle 4 Zone).
An orange glow radiates from the center of NGC 1792, the heart of this stellar furnace. Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this intimate view of NGC 1792 gives us some insight into this galactic powerhouse. The vast swathes of tell-tale blue seen throughout the galaxy indicate areas that are full of young, hot stars, and it is in the shades of orange, seen nearer the center, that the older, cooler stars reside.
Nestled in the constellation of Columba (The Dove), NGC 1792 is both a spiral galaxy and a starburst galaxy. Within starburst galaxies, stars are forming at comparatively exorbitant rates. The rate of star formation can be more than 10 times faster in a starburst galaxy than in our galaxy, the Milky Way. When galaxies have a large reservoir of gas, like NGC 1792, these short-lived starburst phases can be sparked by galactic events such as mergers and tidal interactions. One might think that these starburst galaxies would easily consume all of their gas in a large forming event. However, supernova explosions and intense stellar winds produced in these powerful starbursts can inject energy into the gas and disperse it. This halts the star formation before it can completely deplete the galaxy of all its fuel. Scientists are actively working to understand this complex interplay between the dynamics that drive and quench these fierce bursts of star formation.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee; Acknowledgement: Leo Shatz
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Messier 3 (M3 or NGC 5272) is a globular cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici. It was discovered on May 3, 1764, and was the first Messier object to be discovered by Charles Messier himself. Messier originally mistook the object for a nebula without stars. This mistake was corrected after the stars were resolved by William Herschel around 1784.Since then, it has become one of the best-studied globular clusters. Identification of the cluster's unusually large variable star population was begun in 1913 by American astronomer Solon Irving Bailey and new variable members continue to be identified up through 2004.
This cluster is one of the largest and brightest, and is made up of around 500,000 stars. It is estimated to be 11.4 billion years old. It is located at a distance of about 33,900 light-years away from Earth.
Aquired on April 2020
Luminance - 185 x 60 sec
Red - 30 x 120 sec
Green - 30 x 120 sec
Blue - 30 x 120 sec
Total integration time - 6:05 hours
Imaging telescope, mount and camera:
TS Optics Ritchey-Chrétien 203/1080-1624 mm with 0.67x AP reducer.
Celestron CGEM-DX
ASI1600MM-Cool
Processed with: Pixinsight and Photoshop CC
Location:
Home Backyard, Geleen, Limburg, Netherlands (Bortle 6/7)
This scintillating image showcases the globular cluster NGC 6540 in the constellation Sagittarius. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took the image with its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. These two instruments have slightly different fields of view, which determines how large an area of sky each instrument captures. This composite image shows the star-studded area of sky that encompasses both instruments’ fields of view.
NGC 6540 is a globular cluster. Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound swarms of stars that can hold tens of thousands to millions of stars, all trapped in a closely-packed group by their mutual gravitational attraction.
The brightest stars in this image are adorned with prominent cross-shaped patterns of light known as diffraction spikes, a type of imaging artifact caused by the support structure of Hubble’s secondary mirror rather than the stars themselves. As light enters the telescope, its path is slightly disturbed by the telescope’s four secondary mirror supports. The diffraction spikes form when light waves recombine on the other side of these supports. They are only noticeable in very bright objects where light is concentrated in one spot, as in the case of bright stars. Light from objects like galaxies and nebulae is dimmer and more spread out, so we don’t normally see diffraction spikes on images of these objects.
Hubble peered into the heart of NGC 6540 to help astronomers measure the ages, shapes, and structures of globular clusters toward the center of the Milky Way. The gas and dust that shrouds the center of our galaxy also blocks some of the light from these clusters and subtly changes the colors of their stars. Globular clusters contain insights into the earliest history of the Milky Way, so studying them can help astronomers understand how our galaxy evolved.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/hubble-spies-a-st...
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the sparkling globular cluster NGC 6569 in the constellation Sagittarius. Hubble explored the heart of this cluster with both its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, revealing a glittering hoard of stars in this astronomical treasure trove.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound clusters containing tens of thousands to millions of stars and are associated with all types of galaxies. The intense gravitational attraction of these closely packed clusters of stars means that globular clusters have a regular spherical shape with a densely populated center, as seen at the heart of this star-studded image.
This observation comes from an investigation of globular clusters which lie close to the center of the Milky Way. Previous surveys avoided these objects, as the dusty center of our galaxy blocks their light and alters the colors of the stars residing in them. A star’s color is particularly important for astronomers studying stellar evolution, and can give astronomers insights into their ages, compositions, and temperatures.
The astronomers who proposed these observations combined data from Hubble with data from astronomical archives, allowing them to measure the ages of globular clusters including NGC 6569. Their research also provided insights into the structure and density of globular clusters towards the center of the Milky Way.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen
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Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) is a globular cluster in the constellation Centaurus.
Located at a distance of 15,800 light-years, it is the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way at a diameter of roughly 150 light-years.
It is estimated to contain approximately 10 million stars, totalling the equivalent of 4 million solar masses.
This photo was imaged using a Celestron C8 and a QHY268M at the native 2032mm focal length.
This very bright object was exposed for only 78 minutes, 14x180sec subs through a UV & IR Cut filter and 12 x 60s subs through each of the red, green and blue filters.
M15 (NGC 7078) is a bright globular cluster located in the constellation Pegasus. The age of this cluster is estimated to be 12 billion years, ranking it as one of the oldest known globular clusters.
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120mm ED Triplet APO Refractor, Canon 6D, ISO 3200, 45 x 60 second exposures with dark/bias frames, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Image date: September 24, 2019. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
This star-studded image shows the globular cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, towards the centre 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.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly bound groupings of tens of thousands to millions of stars. As this image demonstrates, the hearts of globular clusters can be densely packed with stars; the night sky in this image is strewn with so many stars that it resembles a sea of sequins or a vast treasure chest crammed with gold.
This starry snapshot is from a Hubble programme investigating globular clusters located towards the heart of the Milky Way. The central region of our home galaxy contains a tightly packed group of stars known as the Galactic bulge, which is also rich in interstellar dust. This dust has made globular clusters near the Galactic centre difficult to study, as it absorbs starlight and can even change the apparent colours of the stars in these clusters. Hubble's sensitivity at both visible and infrared wavelengths has allowed astronomers to measure how the colours of these globular clusters have been changed by interstellar dust, and thereby to establish their ages.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen; CC BY 4.0
This idyllic scene, packed with glowing galaxies, has something truly remarkable at its core: an untouched relic of the ancient Universe. This relic can be seen in the large galaxy at the centre of the frame, a lenticular galaxy named NGC 1277. This galaxy is a member of the famous Perseus Cluster — one of the most massive objects in the known Universe, located some 220 million light-years from Earth. NGC 1277 has been dubbed a “relic of the early Universe” because all of its stars appear to have formed about 12 billion years ago. To put this in perspective, the Big Bang is thought to have happened 13.8 billion years ago. Teeming with billions of old, metal-rich stars, this galaxy is also home to many ancient globular clusters: spherical bundles of stars that orbit a galaxy like satellites. Uniquely, the globuar clusters of NGC 1277 are mostly red and metal-rich — very different to the blue, metal-poor clusters usually seen around similarly-sized galaxies. In astronomy, a metal is any element heavier than hydrogen and helium; these heavier elements are fused together in the hot cores of massive stars and scattered throughout the Universe when these stars explode as they die. In this way, a star’s metal content is related to its age: stars that form later contain greater amounts of metal-rich material, since previous generations of stars have enriched the cosmos from which they are born. Massive galaxies — and their globular clusters — are thought to form in two phases: first comes an early collapse accompanied by a giant burst of star formation, which forms red, metal-rich clusters, followed by a later accumulation of material, which brings in bluer, metal-poor material. The discovery of NGC 1277’s red clusters confirms that the galaxy is a genuine antique that bypassed this second phase, raising important questions for scientists on how galaxies form and evolve: a hotly debated topic in modern astronomy.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and M. Beasley (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias), CC BY 4.0
This image shows the globular cluster NGC 6380, which lies around 35 000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpio (The Scorpion). The very bright star at the top of the image is HD 159073, which is only around 4000 light-years from Earth, making it a much nearer neighbour to Earth than NGC 6380. This image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which, as its name suggests, has a wide field of view, meaning that it can image relatively large areas of the sky in enormous detail.
NGC 6380 is not a particularly exciting name, but it indicates that this cluster is catalogued in the New General Catalogue (NGC), which was originally compiled in 1888. This cluster has, however, been known by many other names. It was originally discovered by James Dunlop in 1826, and he rather immodestly named it Dun 538. Eight years later, in 1834, it was independently rediscovered by John Herschel and he (similarly immodestly) went on to name it H 3688. The cluster was re-rediscovered in 1959 in Paris by Pişmiş, who catalogued it as Tonantzintla 1 — and who, to continue the pattern, also referred to it as Pişmiş 25. In addition to its colourful history of rediscovery, up until the 1950s NGC 6380 was thought to be an open cluster. It was A. D. Thackeray who realised that it was in fact a globular cluster. Nowadays, this cluster is reliably recognised in widely available catalogues as a globular cluster, and referred to simply as NGC 6380.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola; CC BY 4.0
Terzan 1 is a globular cluster that lies about 22,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. It is one of 11 globular clusters that were discovered by the Turkish-Armenian astronomer Agop Terzan between 1966 and 1971 when he was working in France, based mostly at Lyon Observatory.
Somewhat confusingly, the 11 Terzan globular clusters are numbered from Terzan 1 to Terzan 12. This is due to an error made by Terzan in 1971, when he rediscovered Terzan 5 — a cluster he had already discovered and reported back in 1968 — and named it Terzan 11. He published its discovery alongside those of Terzan 9, 10 and 12. He quickly realised his mistake, and attempted to have Terzan 12 renamed as Terzan 11. Unfortunately, he did not make it clear that Terzan 5 and Terzan 11 were one and the same, although another astronomer, Ivan Robert King, did publish a note to try and clear up the confusion. Nowadays, most papers recognise the original Terzan 5 and Terzan 12, and accept the oddity that there is no Terzan 11. There have, however, been instances of confusion in the scientific literature over the past few decades.
Terzan 1 is not a new target for Hubble — an image of the cluster was released back in 2015, taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). That instrument was replaced by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) during the 2009 Hubble servicing mission. WFC3 has both superior resolving power and a wider field of view than WFPC2, and the improvement is obvious in this fantastically detailed image.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen; CC BY 4.0
Astronomers found something they weren't expecting at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397: a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there instead of one massive black hole.
Globular clusters are extremely dense stellar systems, which host stars that are closely packed together. These systems are also typically very old — the globular cluster at the focus of this study, NGC 6397, is almost as old as the universe itself. This cluster resides 7,800 light-years away, making it one of the closest globular clusters to Earth. Due to its very dense nucleus, it is known as a core-collapsed cluster.
At first, astronomers thought the globular cluster hosted an intermediate-mass black hole. These are the long-sought "missing link" between supermassive black holes (many millions of times our Sun's mass) that lie at the cores of galaxies, and stellar-mass black holes (a few times our Sun's mass) that form following the collapse of a single massive star. Their mere existence is hotly debated. Only a few candidates have been identified to date.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Stanghellini
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This image shows the globular cluster NGC 6380, which lies around 35,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scorpio (the Scorpion). Globular clusters are spherical groups of stars held together by gravity; they often contain some of the oldest stars in their galaxies. The very bright star at the top of the image is HD 159073, which is only around 4,000 light-years from Earth, making it a much nearer neighbor than NGC 6380. This image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which, as its name suggests, has a wide field of view, meaning that it can image relatively large areas of the sky in enormous detail.
NGC 6380 is not a particularly exciting name, but it indicates that this cluster is catalogued in the New General Catalogue, which was originally compiled in 1888. This cluster has, however, been known by many other names. It was originally discovered by James Dunlop in 1826, and he rather immodestly named it Dun 538. Eight years later, in 1834, it was independently rediscovered by John Herschel and he (similarly immodestly) went on to name it H 3688. The cluster was re-rediscovered in 1959 by Paris Pismis, who catalogued it as Tonantzintla 1 – and who, to continue the pattern, also referred to it as Pismis 25. In addition to its colorful history of rediscovery, up until the 1950s NGC 6380 was thought to be an open cluster. It was A. D. Thackeray who realized that it was in fact a globular cluster. Nowadays, this cluster is reliably recognized in widely available catalogues as a globular cluster, and referred to simply as NGC 6380.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #starcluster #globularcluster
Colour version of the Rho Ophiuchus complex in Scorpio. 8 x 5 minute luminosity subs with 5 x 3 minutes for red/green/blue. Combined together and post-processed in PixInsight and PS.
Orange supergiant Antares is just off-centre.
Small globular cluster NGC 6144 is at 11pm to Antares just obscured by the dust cloud.
www.flickr.com/photos/16271433@N02/34895843272/in/datepos...
Large globular cluster M4 is at 1pm just above the dust cloud. Dark galactic nebulae to the left of the image.
www.flickr.com/photos/16271433@N02/34507084170/in/photost...
Acquired remotely from T08 wide-angle scope in Siding Springs Observatory, Australia. Field of view here is just under 4 degrees - about 7 moon-widths.
Subs processed by me in Limavady, Northern Ireland.