View allAll Photos Tagged globularcluster
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster NGC 6139. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: This rich and dense smattering of stars is a massive globular cluster, a gravitationally-bound collection of stars that orbits the Milky Way. Globular clusters are denser and more spherical than open star clusters like the famous Pleiades. They typically contain hundreds of thousands of stars that are thought to have formed at roughly the same time. Studies have shown that this globular cluster, named NGC 6139, is home to an aging population of stars. Most globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way are estimated to be over 10 billion years old; as a result they contain some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, formed very early in the galaxy’s history. However, their role in galactic evolution is still a matter of study. This cluster is seen roughly in the direction of the centre of the Milky Way, in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). This constellation is a goldmine of fascinating astronomical objects. Hubble has set its sights on Scorpius many times to observe objects such as the butterfly-like Bug Nebula, surprising binary star systems, and other dazzling globular clusters.
Lights seen through car window with drops of water on it... Taken by my son Nathan during a night ride home. After cropping, contrast adjustment involved boosting shadow to blacken background.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster NGC 6441. Color/processing variant.
Almost like snowflakes, the stars of the globular cluster NGC 6441 sparkle peacefully in the night sky, about 13 000 light-years from the Milky Way’s galactic centre. Like snowflakes, the exact number of stars in such a cluster is difficult to discern. It is estimated that together the stars weigh 1.6 million times the mass of the Sun, making NGC 6441 one of the most massive and luminous globular clusters in the Milky Way. NGC 6441 is host to four pulsars that each complete a single rotation in a few milliseconds. Also hidden within this cluster is JaFu 2, a planetary nebula. Despite its name, this has little to do with planets. A phase in the evolution of intermediate-mass stars, planetary nebulae last for only a few tens of thousands of years, the blink of an eye on astronomical timescales. There are about 150 known globular clusters in the Milky Way. Globular clusters contain some of the first stars to be produced in a galaxy, but the details of their origins and evolution still elude astronomers.
L'amas globulaire Messier 56, dans la constellation de la Lyre. Pour le repérer : il est à mi-chemin entre Albireo (la tête du Cygne, une étoile double) et le bas de la Lyre (où se trouve l'anneau de la Lyre M57), les deux autres sujets de nos photos de ce premier soir d'été. Mais bon, en fait c'est pas si évident à trouver au chercheur car il est assez peu brillant sur un fond déjà riche en étoiles.
Image réalisée à partir de 20 clichés (plus 9 "darks") réalisés avec une caméra GP-Cam au foyer d'un télescope Skywatcher 150/750 (type Newton, ouverture 150 mm, focale 750 mm), équipé d'une monture NEQ3 dont le suivi laissait un peu à désirer, par une nuit sans lune mais avec un léger voile (solstice d'été...), avec des pauses de 3 seconde par cliché. Images empilées avec Deep Sky Stacker et traitée ensuite avec GIMP en suivant un protocole assez classique pour les objets du ciel profond (merci Arnaud Thiry, alias "le studio de poche", alias "Astronogeek" pour tes vidéos indispensables !)
Je suis encore en train d'apprendre comment faire ce genre d'image, mais c'est pour l'instant une des plus réussies que j'ai obtenue...
Edited Hubble Space Telescope (reprocessed - I uploaded a version of this image last fall) of the globular cluster NGC 1898 in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Original caption: This glittering ball of stars is the globular cluster NGC 1898, which lies towards the centre of the Large Magellanic Cloud — one of our closest cosmic neighbours. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy that hosts an extremely rich population of star clusters, making it an ideal laboratory for investigating star formation. Discovered in November 1834 by British astronomer John Herschel, NGC 1898 has been scrutinised numerous times by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Today we know that globular clusters belong to the oldest known objects in the Universe and that they are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation. While we already have a pretty good picture on the globular clusters of the Milky Way — still with many unanswered questions — our studies on globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies just started. The observations of NGC 1898 will help to determine if their properties are similar to the ones found in the Milky Way, or if they have different features, due to being in a different cosmic environment. This image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The WFC3 observes light ranging from near-infrared to near-ultraviolet wavelengths, while the ACS explores the near-infrared to the ultraviolet.
Omega Centauri. To jedna z najbliższych nam gromada kulista, składająca się z 10 milionów gwiazd. W czasach tworzenia oznaczeń przez Bayera w okolicach 1600 roku była uznawana za jedną gwiazdę, stąd oznaczenie literą alfabetu greckiego omega. W jej środku znajduje się czarna dziura o wielkości około 40 tysięcy mas Słońca. Ponowne podziękowania dla Maksa za użyczenie teleskopu.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster NGC 6558. Inverted grayscale variant.
Original caption: This glittering gathering of stars is the globular cluster NGC 6558, and it was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopeâs Advanced Camera for Surveys. NGC 6558 is closer to the centre of the Milky Way than Earth is, and lies about 23 000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Globular clusters like NGC 6558 are tightly bound collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars, and they can be found in a wide range of galaxies. As this observation shows, the stars in globular clusters can be densely packed; this image is thronged with stars in a rich variety of hues. Some of the brightest inhabitants of this globular cluster are surrounded by prominent diffraction spikes, which are imaging artefacts caused by starlight interacting with the inner workings of Hubble. Globular clusters equip astronomers with interesting natural laboratories in which to test their theories, as all the stars in a globular cluster formed at approximately the same time with similar initial composition. These stellar clusters therefore provide unique insights into how different stars evolve under similar conditions. This image comes from a set of observations investigating globular clusters in the inner Milky Way. Astronomers were interested in studying these globular clusters to gain greater insight into how globular clusters in the inner Milky Way form and evolve.
My first deep sky objects picture. It was so difficult to focus.
Taken on Mount Pinos, California, on 23-May-2009.
XSI. William Optics 110. CG5 GEM.
The fatal law of gravity; when you are down, everything falls down on you.
-Sylvia T. Warner
This is the last of the 3 objects I shot this weekend. Another oldie but goodie called M13. Its 25,100 light years away and contains several hundred thousands of stars all tied by gravity to each other in the cluster.
M13, a globular cluster in hercules, captured from Newbourne, Suffolk using the Meade S5000 127mm Apo on an HEQ5-Pro (unguided) and an Eos 350D modded.
A total of about 20 mins of exposure in 30 sec subs at ISO 800.
A few breaks in the clouds around midnight last night so I captured some shots of Globular Cluster M13 using a Canon EOS 60D mounted on a Skywatcher 200 reflector. This image has been made from 349 frames stacked using DeepSkyStacker.
I am almost at the end of my UKMON Fireball Challenge, where I've been creating an astronomy sketch of piece of art every day for 2 months.
This is my sketch from day 58 and it's another globular cluster sketch, this time Messier 92. Sketched with pencil on white paper from one of my own photos.
Globular cluster M53, 39 out of 51 16s shots, taken with a Canon 100D at prime focus of a 100mm f/9 ED refractor, stacked with Deep Sky Stacker and processed with Gimp.
Next time I have to get flats
This is an image, taken on May 19, of a popular object and telescope target in the spring sky, a giant ball of a million stars called Messier 13, the great globular cluster in Hercules. Through a 5-inch (130mm) or larger telescope it looks fabulous! At any dark-sky public stargazing session in spring or summer, at least one telescope will be aimed at M13.
Technical:
Taken with 130mm apo refractor at f/6 with Canon 7D camera at ISO800. Stack of 4 x 8 minute exposures, median combined. © 2010 Alan Dyer
Taken with a Meade DSI Pro Through a 6 inch skywatcher reflector on a celestron ASGT Mount. 4x90 sec
05/05/16
Still a work in progress - more data is needed to reduce the noise, this was only one hour of lights.
Messier 3 (also known as M3 or NGC 5272) is a globular cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici.This cluster is one of the largest and brightest, and is made up of around 500,000 stars. It is estimated to be 8 billion years old. It is located at a distance of about 33,900 light-years away from Earth
4 x Red @ 300s
4 x Green @ 300s
4 x Blue @300s
No calibration frames yet
SW Equinox 80 APO Pro and Field Flattener
EQ5 Pro Synscan GOTO.
Guiding: SW 9x 50 finder guider and QHY5.
Atik 314L+ mono
Baader RGB Filters 1.25''
Using: Artemis capture, PHD, DSS, and Photoshop CC.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster NGC 1866. Inverted grayscale variant.
Original caption: Star clusters are common structures throughout the Universe, each made up of hundreds of thousands of stars all bound together by gravity. This star-filled image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows one of them: NGC 1866. NGC 1866 is found at the very edges of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy located near to the Milky Way. The cluster was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, who catalogued thousands of stars and deep-sky objects during his career. However, NGC 1866 is no ordinary cluster. It is a surprisingly young globular cluster situated close enough to us that its stars can be studied individually — no mean feat given the mammoth distances involved in studying the cosmos! There is still debate over how globular clusters form, but observations such as this have revealed that most of their stars are old and have a low metallicity. In astronomy, ‘metals’ are any elements other than hydrogen and helium; since stars form heavier elements within their core as they carry out nuclear fusion throughout their lifetimes, a low metallicity indicates that a star is very old, as the material from which it formed was not enriched with many heavy elements. It’s possible that the stars within globular clusters are so old that they were actually some of the very first to form after the Big Bang. In the case of NGC 1866, though, not all stars are the same. Different populations, or generations, of stars are thought to coexist within the cluster. Once the first generation of stars formed, the cluster may have encountered a giant gas cloud that sparked a new wave of star formation and gave rise to a second, younger, generation of stars — explaining why it seems surprisingly youthful.
Edited Chandra Space Telescope (with optical data from the European Southern Observatory image of the cluster Terzan 5. X-ray data from Chandra is shown in bright purple. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Peering through the thick dust clouds of the galactic bulge an international team of astronomers has revealed the unusual mix of stars in the stellar cluster known as Terzan 5. The new results indicate that Terzan 5 is in fact one of the bulge's primordial building blocks, most likely the relic of the very early days of the Milky Way. Observations were made with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the Hubble, the Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and the second generation Near Infrared Camera at the Keck Telescope.
Camera: Meade DSI Color II
Exposure: 50m LRGB exposure (100x30s RGB and Lum Exposures)
Focus Method: Prime focus
Telescope Aperature/Focal Length: 203×812mm
Mount: LXD75
Telescope: Meade 8" Schmidt-Newtonian
Stacked: Envisage
Adjustments: leveled in Photoshop
Location: Flintstone, GA
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of distorted globular cluster Messier 62. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Most globular clusters are almost perfectly spherical collections of stars — but Messier 62 breaks the mould. The 12-billion-year-old cluster is distorted, and stretches out on one side to form a comet-like shape with a bright head and extended tail. As one of the closest globular clusters to the centre of our galaxy, Messier 62 is likely affected by strong tidal forces that displace many of its stars, resulting in this unusual shape. When globular clusters form, they tend to be somewhat denser towards the centre. The more massive the cluster, the denser the centre is likely to be. With a mass with almost a million times that of the Sun, Messier 62 is one of the densest of them all. With so many stars at the centre, interactions and mergers occur regularly. Huge stars form and run out of fuel quickly, exploding violently and their remains collapse to form white dwarfs, neutron stars and even black holes! For many years, it was believed that any black holes that form in a globular cluster would quickly be kicked out due to the violent interactions taking place there. However, in 2013, a black hole was discovered in Messier 62 — the first ever to be found in a Milky Way globular cluster, giving astronomers a whole new hunting ground for these mysterious objects. This view comprises ultraviolet and visible light gathered by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of a small part of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). If you look carefully, you can spot many globular clusters, and if you look even deeper, you can see more galaxies behind Andromeda (all orange or red since the light was slowed down by dust in Andromeda, and hence is redder).
M13 Globular Cluster-2012.09.07-Canon EOS450D-300mm Lens-120sec-ISO 1600-single exposure-Gimp2.6-Neat Image. This globular cluster is located in the constellation of Hercules.
Located about 60,000 LY from both our solar system and the galactic center, M53 is an 'outlying' globular cluster and one of the more distant. It is a class-V, with a bright compact central nucleus and a linear diameter of 220 LY.
Canary Islands 1 High Mag | 26 Mar 11 03:08:40 UTC
This image was captured by me using the real-time online telescopes at slooh.com
Credit: Giovanni Vincenzo Donatiello (@giovannivincenzo_donatiello)
Piano Visitone, Pollino National Park, August 18, 2023
Taken with Mak 127 + EOS4000D
Cross-stack with just three 30-second exposures at IS0 3200.
Messier 4 or M4 (NGC 6121) is a globular cluster at approximately 7,200 light years, the same distance as NGC 6397, making these the two closest globular clusters. It has an estimated age of 12.2 billion years.
Omega Centauri
Stack Size:20
Exposure: 60s
ISO: 6400
Lens: 8in SCT
Camera: Canon Rebel T7i (no astro-mod)
Focal Reducer: 6.3
Edited Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster Messier 54, which orbits the nearby Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: The object shown in this beautiful Hubble image, dubbed Messier 54, could be just another globular cluster, but this dense and faint group of stars was in fact the first globular cluster found that is outside our galaxy. Discovered by the famous astronomer Charles Messier in 1778, Messier 54 belongs to a satellite of the Milky Way called the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. Messier had no idea of the significance of his discovery at the time, and it wasn’t until over two centuries later, in 1994, that astronomers found Messier 54 to be part of the miniature galaxy and not our own. Current estimates indicate that the Sagittarius dwarf, and hence the cluster, is situated almost 90 000 light-years away — more than three times as far from the centre of our galaxy than the Solar System. Ironically, even though this globular cluster is now understood to lie outside the Milky Way, it will actually become part of it in the future. The strong gravitational pull of our galaxy is slowly engulfing the Sagittarius dwarf, which will eventually merge with the Milky Way creating one much larger galaxy. This picture is a composite created by combining images taken with the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Light that passed through a yellow-orange (F606W) was coloured blue and light passing through a near-infrared filter (F814W) was coloured red. The total exposure times were 3460 s and 3560 s, respectively and the field of view is approximately 3.4 by 3.4 arcminutes.
While this globular cluster spans an apparent region 200 LY wide, its tidal radius influences a spherical volume nearly four times that. M3 is compiled of about half-a-million stars, including more than 200 variables and many Blue Stragglers.
Canary Islands 1 High Mag | 27 Mar 11 01:08:46 UTC
This image was captured by me using the real-time online telescopes at slooh.com
Messier 5 @ 300mm x1.6 as seen from Houston, TX. Stacked from 225 exposures (1s f/5.6 ISO800 each) with 25 dark frames using DeepSkyStacker. The star cluster is located in the constellation Serpens (Caput) of apparent magnitude 6.65, and can be seen near the center of this picture. On the original size individual stars near the edge are identifiable.
next target: Omega Centauri (need to stay up late...)
Image Details:
* Nikon D40
* Meade LX200 8" Classic, F6.3 mounted on Milburn wedge
* 20 * 30 second exposures @ ISO 1600
* 5 * 30 second dark frames
* Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
* Mild sharpening and noise removal in Neat Image
M4 Globular Star Cluster near Bright Star Antares, with dust clouds, and smaller globular NGC6144.
taken on 05/14/07 by John Chumack with AREO-3 at
RAS-Observatory, New Mexico. 20 minute exposure LRGB with a Takahashi TOA 6" refractor and SBIG STL11000 CCD.
Edited Chandra Space Telescope (with optical data from the European Southern Observatory image of the cluster Terzan 5. X-ray data from Chandra is shown in bright purple.
Original caption: Peering through the thick dust clouds of the galactic bulge an international team of astronomers has revealed the unusual mix of stars in the stellar cluster known as Terzan 5. The new results indicate that Terzan 5 is in fact one of the bulge's primordial building blocks, most likely the relic of the very early days of the Milky Way. Observations were made with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the Hubble, the Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and the second generation Near Infrared Camera at the Keck Telescope.
Edited Chandra Space Telescope (with optical data from the European Southern Observatory image of the cluster Terzan 5.
Original caption: Peering through the thick dust clouds of the galactic bulge an international team of astronomers has revealed the unusual mix of stars in the stellar cluster known as Terzan 5. The new results indicate that Terzan 5 is in fact one of the bulge's primordial building blocks, most likely the relic of the very early days of the Milky Way. Observations were made with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the Hubble, the Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and the second generation Near Infrared Camera at the Keck Telescope.
Edited Chandra Space Telescope (with optical data from the European Southern Observatory image of the cluster Terzan 5. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: Peering through the thick dust clouds of the galactic bulge an international team of astronomers has revealed the unusual mix of stars in the stellar cluster known as Terzan 5. The new results indicate that Terzan 5 is in fact one of the bulge's primordial building blocks, most likely the relic of the very early days of the Milky Way. Observations were made with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the Hubble, the Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and the second generation Near Infrared Camera at the Keck Telescope.