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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 Pişmiş, who catalogued it as Tonantzintla 1 – and who, to continue the pattern, also referred to it as Pişmiş 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.
Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-reveals-a-...
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. The intense gravitational attraction between closely packed stars in globular clusters is what gives these star-studded objects their regular, spherical shape.
This image combines data from two of Hubble's most powerful cameras: the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. It also uses data from two different observing programs conducted by two different teams of astronomers. The first team set out to survey globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy in the hope of shedding light on topics ranging from the ages of these objects to the gravitational potential of the galaxy as a whole. The second team of astronomers used a trio of exquisitely sensitive filters in Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to disentangle the proportions of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in globular clusters such as NGC 6652.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #astronomy #globularcluster
My attempt to capture M5, a globular cluster in the constellation Serpens.
99x180"
QHY8L
Sky-Watcher 200/1000 reflector
Sky-Watcher NEQ6-Pro
Optolong L-Pro filter
Omega Centauri (ω Cen or NGC 5139) is a globular cluster in the constellation of Centaurus that was first identified as a non-stellar object by Edmond Halley in 1677. Located at a distance of 15,800 light-years (4,850 pc), it is the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way at a diameter of roughly 150 light-years.
This data was shot by Pete Williamson with the Faulkes Telescope Project, using the 2 metre Ritchie-Chretien telescope. I was given access to a bunch of raw data after attending a remote imaging workshop with Pete. The data was shot by him, but stacked and fully processed by me.
5 x 20 second exposures of red, green and blue. Each channel was stacked using Deep Sky Stacker. Each stacked image was stretched, then once I'd processed all 3, I brought them together in a single RGB image then processed the blended image further. Processed in Photoshop CS2, Lightroom and Fast Stone Image Viewer
This is one of the brightest globular clusters in the northern skies and under very dark conditions it can even be seen with the unaided eye. Also shown near to the right center edge of this image is the small (1.6 x 0.4 arc minute) spiral galaxy NGC 5263.
Photographed on the mornings of May 12 and 15, 2015 from my light-polluted driveway using a 5 inch aperture, f/5.2 telescope and a Sony NEX-5R digital camera (ISO 800, a stack of two hundred and forty-nine images each exposed for 30 seconds, producing a total exposure integration time of just over 124 minutes).
Image registration, integration, and adjustments done with PixInsight v01.08.03.1123 with final tweaks in Photoshop CC 2014.
This photo is best viewed at full size (1920 x 1600) or against a dark background (press the "L" key to enter the Flickr light box).
All rights reserved.
Messier 107 (M107) is a loose globular cluster found in the constellation Ophiuchus. M107 is about 20,900 light-years away from Earth. It is the last globular cluster in the Messier Catalog.
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro, 15 x 60 second exposures, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and processed using PixInsight. Image date: July 20, 2020. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
Messier 92 (also known as M92, M 92, or NGC 6341) is a globular cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Hercules. Located 27,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hercules, this globular cluster was first discovered by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1777. With an apparent magnitude of 6.3, M92 is one of the brightest globular clusters in the Milky Way and is visible to the naked eye under good observing conditions. It can be most easily spotted during the month of July. The cluster is very tightly packed with stars, containing roughly 330,000 stars in total. (REF: science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...)
Tech Specs: Orion 8” RC Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 115 x 60 second exposures, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DeepSkyStacker and PixInsight software. Image Date: May 2, 2024. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
This densely populated group of stars is the globular cluster known as NGC 1841, which is found within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way galaxy that lies about 162 000 light-years away. Satellite galaxies are galaxies that are bound by gravity in orbits around a more massive host galaxy. We typically think of our galaxy’s nearest galactic companion as being the Andromeda Galaxy, but it would be more accurate to say that Andromeda is the nearest galaxy that is not in orbit around the Milky Way galaxy. In fact, our galaxy is orbited by tens of known satellite galaxies that are far closer than Andromeda, the largest and brightest of which is the LMC, which is easily visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere (although this is decreasingly the case thanks to light pollution).
The LMC is home to many globular clusters. These celestial bodies fall somewhere between open clusters — which are much less dense and tightly bound — and small, compact galaxies. Increasingly sophisticated observations have revealed the stellar populations and other characteristics of globular clusters to be varied and complex, and it is not well understood how these tightly-packed clusters form. However, there are certain consistencies across all globular clusters: they are very stable and so are capable of lasting a long time, and can therefore be very old. This means that globular clusters often contain large numbers of very old stars, which make them something akin to celestial ‘fossils’. Just as fossils provide insight into the early development of life on Earth, globular clusters such as NGC 1841 can provide insights into very early star formation in galaxies.
[Image Description: A cluster of stars. Most of the stars are very small and uniform in size, and they are notably bluish and cluster more densely together towards the centre of the image. Some appear larger in the foreground. The stars give way to a dark background at the corners.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, F. Niederhofer; CC BY 4.0
The globular cluster NGC 2005, featured in this Hubble Picture of the Week, is not unusual in and of itself; but it is a peculiarity in relation to its surroundings. NGC 2005 is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy and which itself lies about 162 000 light-years from Earth. Globular clusters are densely-packed clusters that can constitute tens of thousands or millions of stars. Their density means that they are tightly gravitationally bound and are therefore very stable. This stability contributes to their longevity: globular clusters can be billions of years old, and as such often comprise very old stars. Thus, studying globular clusters in space can be a little like studying fossils on Earth: where fossils give insights into the characteristics of ancient plants and animals, globular clusters illuminate the characteristics of ancient stars.
Current theories of galaxy evolution predict that galaxies merge with one another. It is widely thought that the relatively large galaxies that we observe in the modern Universe were formed via the merging of smaller galaxies. If this is correct, then astronomers would expect to see evidence that the most ancient stars in nearby galaxies originated in different galactic environments. As globular clusters are known to contain ancient stars, and because of their stability, they are an excellent laboratory to test this hypothesis.
NGC 2005 is such a globular cluster, and its very existence has provided evidence to support the theory of galaxy evolution via mergers. Indeed, the stars in NGC 2005 have a chemical composition that is distinct from the stars in the LMC around it. This suggests that the LMC underwent a merger with another galaxy somewhere in its history. That other galaxy has long-since merged and otherwise dispersed, but NGC 2005 remains behind as an ancient witness to the long-past merger.
[Image Description: A globular cluster, appearing as a highly dense and numerous collection of shining stars. Some appear a bit larger and brighter than others, with the brightest having cross-shaped spikes around them. They are scattered mostly uniformly, but in the centre they crowd together more and more densely, and merge into a strong glow at the cluster’s core.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Niederhofer, L. Girardi; CC BY 4.0
Harlow Shapley remarked that about 1/3 of the globular clusters in our sky lie in the direction of Sagittarius. M28 (NGC 6626) is one of those many clusters.
Shot with LRGB filters from my backyard in Long Beach, CA.
L: 32 10 s exposures
R: 64 20 s exposures
G: 66 20 s exposures
B: 74 20 s exposures
All taken with an Atik 414-EX mono camera on a Celestron Edge HD 925 at a focal length of 530 mm using HyperStar. LRGB filters are from Optolong and changed with the Starizona filter slider system.
Pre-processing in Nebulosity; registration, stacking, channel combination, and processing in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.
Here is an early morning view of the Sagittarius star cloud region of the constellation Sagittarius I photographed back in May 2016. The field of view contains five Messier objects including the Omega Nebula (M17), Black Swan open cluster (M18), M25, M23 and the star cloud area called M24. I’m looking forward to getting the 12” telescope on some of these later this month.
Canon 6D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM lens, iOptron Skytracker, 5 x 15 seconds, ISO 2000, f/2.8, 200mm and a Tiffen star filter.
This is a shot I'd like to redo with about four times the exposure time...DeepSkyStacker: 105 mm, f/2.8, 1 min 29 sec, 56 frames, 12800
I photographed Messier 54 (M54 or NGC 6715) on July 16, 2015. The final image is composed of 14, 30-second images captured at ISO 3200. M54 is located close to the star Zeta Sagittarii, it is a bright, but small globular cluster. It was discovered in 1994 that M54 most likely belongs to the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (SagDEG), making it the first globular cluster formerly thought to be part of our galaxy reassigned to extragalactic status, even if not recognized as such for nearly two and a quarter centuries.
Stack of 29 25 s ISO2000 unguided frames taken with a Nikon D5100 on a Celestron Edge HD 925 at 2150 mm focal length.
I like this version better than what I got with the monochrome CCD and filter wheel set.
The muted red tones of the globular cluster Liller 1 are partially obscured in this Hubble Space Telescope 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 cannot detect. Liller 1 is only 30,000 light-years from Earth — relatively nearby 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 are able to 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 extraordinary long period of time.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Ferraro
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2221a/
The glittering globular cluster Terzan 12 — a vast, tightly bound collection of stars — fills the frame of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This star-studded stellar census comes from a string of observations that aim to systematically explore globular clusters located towards the centre of our galaxy, such as this one in the constellation Sagittarius. The locations of these globular clusters — deep in the Milky Way galaxy — mean that they are shrouded in gas and dust, which can block or alter the wavelengths of starlight emanating from the clusters.
Here, astronomers were able to sidestep the effect of gas and dust by comparing the new observations made with the razor-sharp vision of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 with pre-existing images. Their observations should shed light on the relation between age and composition in the Milky Way’s innermost globular clusters.
[Image Description: The frame is completely filled with bright stars, ranging from tiny dots to large, shining stars with prominent spikes. In the lower-right the stars come together in the core of the star cluster, making the brightest and densest area of the image. The background varies from darker and warmer in colour, to brighter and paler where there are more stars.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen (Rutgers University); CC BY 4.0
A globular cluster of approximately half a million stars located 34,000 light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici.
Total exposure time: 31 mins
Telescope: Tele Vue-60 APO refractor
Mount: Vixen Super Polaris
Globular Cluster Messier 70 (M70 or NGC 6681) is a globular cluster that can be found in the constellation Sagittarius. This cluster was photographed in July 2015 and the final image is a stack of 14 thirty-second exposures (seven minutes total) at ISO 3200 using a Canon 6D at prime focus of a Celestron 6″ telescope. The imaging system was mounted on an iOptron ZEQ25 equatorial mount for guiding.
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 criss-crossing 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 6500 light-years from the Galactic centre.
Globular clusters are stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters containing anywhere between tens of thousands and millions of stars. The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars in globular clusters is what gives these star-studded objects their regular, spherical shape.
This image combines data from two of Hubble’s third-generation instruments; the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. As well as two instruments, this image draws on two different observing programmes from two different teams of astronomers. The first team set out to survey globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy in the hope of shedding light on topics ranging from the ages of these objects to the gravitational potential of the galaxy as a whole. The second team of astronomers used a trio of exquisitely sensitive filters in Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to disentangle the proportions of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in globular clusters such as NGC 6652.
[Image Description: A dense spherical cluster of stars. The stars merge into a bright core in the centre, and spread out to the edges gradually, giving way to an empty, dark background. Most of the stars are small points of light. A few stars with cross-shaped diffraction spikes appear larger, and stand out in front.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Sarajedini, G. Piotto
This is the second globular cluster I photographed on the evening of June 6, 2015 – it was like a globular cluster bonanza, as this part of the sky contain several that I planned to acquire that evening. This most recent observation was made using a Canon 6D with an attached Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens using my STANDARD ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY SETUP.
Messier 12 (M12 or NGC 6218 in the New General Catalog) is a globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus. Through my online research I also found that this cluster is referred to as the “Gumball Globular”, that’s a new one for me. It was discovered in 1764 by the French astronomer Charles Messier who described it as a “nebula without stars”. M12 is approximately 15,700 light-years distant. You will definitely need binoculars or a small telescope to see this cluster. This cluster contains about 200,000 stars, the brightest of them are about 12th magnitude.
This is an image of Messier 12 from a 10-minute total exposure using 1-minute subs. The images were taken on the evening of June 6, 2015 before moonrise.
IC 1276 (also known as Palomar 7) is a globular star cluster in the constellation Serpens. Because of its position inside the Milky Way and its distance of 17,600 light-years the dust of the Milky Way reddens the color of this globular cluster.
RA: 18:10:44.20
Dec: -07:12:27.4
Distance from Sun: 17.6 kly
Apparent Diameter: 21.0 arc min
Brightness: 10.34 mag vis
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 75x60 seconds guided exposures, Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: August 10, 2023. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Many colorful stars are packed close together in this image of the globular cluster NGC 1805, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This tight grouping of thousands of stars is located near the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. The stars orbit closely to one another, like bees swarming around a hive. In the dense center of one of these clusters, stars are 100 to 1,000 times closer together than the nearest stars are to our Sun, making planetary systems around them unlikely.
The striking difference in star colors is illustrated beautifully in this image, which combines different types of light: blue stars, shining brightest in near-ultraviolet light, and red stars, illuminated in red and near-infrared. Space telescopes like Hubble can observe in the ultraviolet because they are positioned above Earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs most ultraviolet light, making it inaccessible to ground-based facilities.
This young globular cluster can be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, in the Dorado constellation, which is Portuguese for dolphinfish. Usually, globular clusters contain stars that are born at the same time. NGC 1805, however, is unusual as it appears to host two different populations of stars with ages millions of years apart. Observing such clusters of stars can help astronomers understand how stars evolve, and what factors determine whether they end their lives as white dwarfs or explode as supernovae.
Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Kalirai
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2020/hubble-stows-a-po...
Globular Cluster Messier 80 (M80 or NGC 6093) is a globular cluster that can be found in the constellation Scorpius. This cluster was photographed in July 2015 and the final image is a stack of 18 thirty-second exposures (nine minutes total) at ISO 3200 using a Canon 6D at prime focus of a Celestron 6″ telescope. The imaging system was mounted on an iOptron ZEQ25 equatorial mount for guiding.
M80 lies at a distance of about 32,600 light-years. It is one of the densest globular clusters in our galaxy. Software used to create this image include DeepSkyStacker (for stacking the individual frames), ImagesPlus (for initial stretching and post processing), and Corel Paintshop Pro X5 and Adobe Lightroom for the final image adjustments.
This star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts NGC 6717, which lies more than 20,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. NGC 6717 is a globular cluster, a roughly spherical collection of stars tightly bound together by gravity. Globular clusters contain more stars in their centers than their outer fringes, as this image aptly demonstrates; the sparsely populated edges of NGC 6717 are in stark contrast to the sparkling collection of stars at its center.
The center of the image also contains some interlopers from closer to home. These bright foreground stars reside between Earth and the cluster. They are easily spotted by the crisscross diffraction spikes that form when their light interacts with the structures supporting Hubble’s secondary mirror.
The constellation Sagittarius is in the same area of the night sky as the center of the Milky Way, which is filled with light-absorbing gas and dust. This absorption of light – which astronomers call “extinction” – makes studying globular clusters near the galactic center challenging. To determine the properties of NGC 6717, astronomers relied on a combination of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Sarajedini
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-captures-a...
I'm posting this, even though there are multiple problems with it. *update* This is the completed mosaic:
www.flickr.com/photos/astrothad/51275682056/stats/
- There's that gradient over on the right side by the star Alniyat. I can probably fix that by doing some more overlapping panels, though that will be slow going. It's probably more difficult to fix in the post-processing phase. All the panels have photometric color calibration done in PixInsight, but that still doesn't match up across that line.
- Overall, more panels will help, as there is such wild variation in this part of the sky. This is likely going to take more effort than my γ Cyg mosaic.
- What do I do about Antares? I figured out tricks to deal with 2nd magnitude stars that are in or near a shot like this. That worked for Sadr, or Alnitak, or even Alniyat in this shot. Antares leaves artifacts when I put it in the center of the image, or if I put it just out of frame. That's the reason for the empty black rectangular region. Again, maybe many panels and lots of cutting and pasting to get rid of artifacts might work. So would a simpler optical system, but I'm not going to get a refractor for this one image.
Any advice on this is appreciated. I'll pick this up again next summer, provided nothing in this frame goes supernova in the meantime.
14 panels, each a stack of 90 s exposures, with a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with HyperStar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Nebulosity, PixInsight, Image Composite Editor, and PS CS 5.1 all got involved at some point.
Several million young stars vie for attention in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula. Early astronomers nicknamed the nebula because its glowing filaments resemble spider legs.
30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region visible in a neighboring galaxy and home to the most massive stars ever seen. Collectively, the stars in this image are millions of times more massive than our Sun. The image is roughly 650 light-years across and contains some rambunctious stars, from one of the fastest rotating stars to the speediest and most massive runaway star.
The image reveals the stages of star birth, from embryonic stars a few thousand years old still wrapped in cocoons of dark gas to behemoths that die young in supernova explosions. 30 Doradus is a star-forming factory, churning out stars at a furious pace over millions of years. Hubble shows star clusters of various ages, from about 2 million to about 25 million years old.
The region's sparkling centerpiece is a giant, young star cluster (left of center) named NGC 2070, only 2 million years old. Its stellar inhabitants number roughly 500,000. Its dense core, known as R136, is packed with some of the heftiest stars found in the nearby universe, weighing more than 100 times the mass of our Sun.
The massive stars are carving deep cavities in the surrounding material by unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light, which is etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born. When the radiation hits dense walls of gas, it creates shocks, which may be generating a new wave of star birth.
The composite image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and includes observations taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble image is combined with ground-based data of the Tarantula Nebula, taken with the European Southern Observatory's 2.2-meter telescope in La Silla, Chile. NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute released the image to celebrate Hubble's 22nd anniversary.
For more information, visit:
hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2012/news-2012-01.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S. E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), N. Bastian (Excellence Cluster, Munich), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), E. Bressert (ESO), P. Crowther (University of Sheffield), A. de Koter (University of Amsterdam), C. Evans (UKATC/STFC, Edinburgh), A. Herrero (IAC, Tenerife), N. Langer (AifA, Bonn), I. Platais (JHU), and H. Sana (University of Amsterdam)
The area of Ophiuchus and Scorpius with the globular clusters M19 (at centre) and M62 (at bottom left). The dark lane intruding from the left is the Pipe Nebula. ..This is a stack of 5 x 2-minute exposures with the 200mm lens at f/2.8 and Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600.
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: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 81x60 seconds guided exposures, Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: August 11, 2023. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
This ancient stellar jewelry box, a globular cluster called NGC 6397, glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars.
Astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to gauge the cluster's distance at 7,800 light-years away. NGC 6397 is one of the closest globular clusters to Earth.
The cluster's blue stars are near the end of their lives. These stars have used up their hydrogen fuel that makes them shine. Now they are converting helium to energy in their cores, which fuses at a higher temperature, resulting in a blue color.
The reddish glow is from red giant stars that have consumed their hydrogen fuel and have expanded in size.
The myriad small white objects include stars like our Sun.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Tom M. Brown (STScI), Stefano Casertano (STScI), Jay Anderson (STScI)
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-008
Globular Cluster Messier 71 (M71) also known as NGC 6838 is located in the constellation Sagitta. This image was photographed on August 14, 2014 and consisted of 6 frames for a total exposure time of 8 minutes at ISO 3200. A Canon 6D and 400mm lens was used for the capture, it was mounted on an iOptron ZEQ25GT mount.
M5 is about 24500 LY away and contains at least 100000 stars. It is 165 LY across and is one of the larger globular clusters to orbit our galaxy.
Probably the core remnant of a small dwarf galaxy largely devoured by our galaxy, it is about 13 billion years old and contains a large number of variable RR Lyrae type stars. These are similar to Cepheid variables and have a luminosity/period relationship that can be used to precisely estimate their distance.
Serpens is quite low in the sky for me and M5 only just brushed over my neighbour's rooftop. I managed 6 x 10 minute subs before cloud crept in. There was quite a strong background gradient.
The large star nearby is 5 Serpens.
Equipment-
480/80mm f/6 Altair Starwave triplet refractor.
Altair Planostar 1.0 x FF with 2 inch IDAS LPS D1 filter
Astro-modified Canon 80D at ISO400; 6 x 10 minute subs (60 mins total integration).
NEQ6 Pro Mount with Rowan modified belt drives. 1-star align.
Laptop with BackyardEOS for focusing and acquisition.
Calibration-
60 dark frames - sensor temperature matched from Dark Library (17c)
80 bias frames
60 flat frames (Electroluminescent panel @ 1/40s)
QHY Polemaster alignment -
Error measured by PHD2= 1.3 arc minute.
RA drift +1.75 arcsec/min
Dec drift +2.70 arcsec/min
Guiding-
PHD2 guiding with ZWO ASI290mm/Altair lightwave 209/50mm secondary scope. Alternate subs dithered.
RA RMS error 0.88 arcsec, peak error -3.50 arcsec
Dec RMS error 0.60 arcsec, peak error 3.32 arcsec
Astrometry-
Center (RA, hms): 15h 18m 31.213s
Center (Dec, dms): +2° 14' 36.94"
Size: 85 x 61 arcmin
Pixel scale:1.59 arcsec/pixel
Light Pollution-
SQM (L) at middle of session (0140 hrs UT) 20.48 mag/arcsec2 Typical of rural/suburban edge - Bortle scale = 4/9 Green/Yellow
Environmental-
Temp =11.8c
Humidity = 55%
Dew point = 4.2c
Light cloud, 2 subs lost to cloud - session terminated.
Post processed in PixInsight 1.8.
Messier 22
Credit: Giuseppe Donatiello
J2000 RA 18h 36m 23.94s Dec –23° 54′ 17.1″
Messier 22 (NGC 6656) is an elliptical globular cluster in Sagittarius, near the Galactic bulge region. It is one of the brightest globulars visible in the night sky and one of the nearer at a distance of about 10,600 light-years. It spans 32' on the sky which translates to a spatial real diameter of 99 ± 9 light-years.
It was one of the first globular clusters to be carefully studied first by Harlow Shapley in 1930.
M22 is very unusual in that it is one of only four globulars (the others being M15, NGC 6441 and Palomar 6) that are known to contain a planetary nebula.
127ED dataset
M53 is 58,000 light years from us in the Coma Berenices constellation. This is one of 157 known globular clusters in our galaxy. Many more may exist that are hidden by dark matter and dust clouds. Generally located on the outer fringes of the galaxy, they are mostly made up of older stars held together by gravity. Though little is known about globular clusters, they possibly containing some of the first stars in the galaxy.
Photographed 58,000 years later from Alexander Valley, Sonoma County, Calif, Earth.
March 2021.
First deep sky image using the Celestron C6-A SCT was M13, just a one-minute exposure, no flats or darks. There was some image vignetting that I'm hoping darks and flats will handle, images were taken with a 60% moon as well.
The telescope was attached to an iOptron ZEQ25 mount and the camera being used was a Caon 6D.
EN
In this large field capture made on April 7, 2019, we can see in the upper part the sting of the scorpion that begins with the bright blue "Lesath" in the upper left.
Looking towards the arm of Sagittarius we can find multiple nebulae, like the cat's paw nebula in the upper part, the prawn nebula in the central part, multiple H1 regions and dozens of stellar clusters distributed in the galactic neighborhood.
ES
En esta captura de gran campo realizada el 7 de abril de 2019, podemos ver en la parte superior el aguijon del escorpión que comienza con la azul brillante "Lesath" en la parte superior izquierda, Mirando hacia el brazo de Sagitario podemos encontrar múltiples nebulosas, como las nebulosas de la pata de gato en la parte superior, la nebulosa de la gamba en la parte central, multiples regiones H ll y decenas de cumulos estelares repartidos en el vencindario galactico.
Realizada en el cajon del maipo, Chile.
Made in the cajon del Maipo, Chile.
Exif:
Sony SLT-A77
50 mm F/1,4 Minolta
50mm - F/4 - Iso 800
15 frames x 120s
Crop X2
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the globular cluster NGC 6380, which lies around 35,00 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 4,000 light-years from Earth, making it a much nearer neighbor than NGC 6380.
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, who named it Dun 538. Eight years later, in 1834, it was independently rediscovered by John Herschel and he went on to name it H 3688. Paris Pişmiş, who catalogued it as Tonantzintla 1 – and who, to continue the pattern, also referred to it as Pişmiş 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.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2128a/
This sparkly image shows Euclid’s view on a globular cluster called NGC 6397. Globular clusters are collections of hundreds of thousands of stars held together by gravity.
Located about 7800 light-years from Earth, NGC 6397 is the second-closest globular cluster to us. Together with other globular clusters it orbits in the disc of the Milky Way, where the majority of stars are located.
Globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in the Universe. That’s why they contain a lot of clues about the history and evolution of their host galaxies, like this one for the Milky Way.
The challenge is that it is typically difficult to observe an entire globular cluster in just one sitting. Their centres contain lots of stars, so many that the brightest ‘drown out’ the fainter ones. Their outer regions extend a long way out and contain mostly low-mass, faint stars. It is the faint stars that can tell us about previous interactions with the Milky Way.
“Currently no other telescope than Euclid can observe the entire globular cluster and at the same time distinguish its faint stellar members in the outer regions from other cosmic sources,” explains Euclid Consortium scientist Davide Massari of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy.
For example, Hubble has observed the core of NGC 6397 in detail, but it would take a lot of observing time with Hubble to map the outskirts of the cluster, something Euclid can do in just one hour. ESA’s Gaia mission can track the movement of globular clusters, but can’t tell what’s going on with very faint stars. And telescopes from the ground can cover a larger field, but with a poorer depth and resolution, so they can’t distinguish the faint outskirts entirely.
Davide and his colleagues will use Euclid to search for ‘tidal tails’ in globular clusters: a tidal tail is a trail of stars that extends far beyond the cluster because of a previous interaction with a galaxy.
“We expect all of the globular clusters in the Milky Way to have them, but so far we have only seen them around just a few,” says Davide. “If there are no tidal tails, then there could be a dark matter halo around the globular cluster, preventing the outer stars from escaping. But we don’t expect dark matter haloes around smaller-scale objects like globular clusters, only around bigger structures like dwarf galaxies or the Milky Way itself.”
If Davide and his team find tidal tails for NGC 6397 and other globular clusters in the Milky Way, that would allow them to very precisely calculate how the clusters orbit our galaxy. “And this will tell us how dark matter is distributed in the Milky Way,” Davide adds.
With Euclid’s observations, the team also wants to determine the age of globular clusters, to investigate the chemical properties of their stellar populations, and to study ultra-cool dwarf stars – the lowest mass members of the cluster.
The data in this image were taken in about one hour of observation. This colour image was obtained by combining VIS data and NISP photometry in Y and H bands; its size is 8800 x 8800 pixels. VIS and NISP enable observing astronomical sources in four different wavelength ranges. Aesthetics choices led to the selection of three out of these four bands to be cast onto the traditional Red-Green-Blue colour channels used to represent images on our digital screens (RGB). The blue, green, red channels capture the Universe seen by Euclid around the wavelength 0.7, 1.1, and 1.7 micron respectively. This gives Euclid a distinctive colour palette: hot stars have a white-blue hue, excited hydrogen gas appears in the blue channel, and regions rich in dust and molecular gas have a clear red hue. Distant redshifted background galaxies appear very red. In the image, the stars have six prominent spikes due to how light interacts with the optical system of the telescope in the process of diffraction. Another signature of Euclid special optics is the presence of a few, very faint and small round regions of a fuzzy blue colour. These are normal artefacts of complex optical systems, so-called ‘optical ghost’; easily identifiable during data analysis, they do not cause any problem for the science goals.
The cutout from the full view of NGC 6397 is at the high resolution of the VIS instrument. This is nine times better than the definition of NISP that was selected for the full view; this was done for the practical reason of limiting the format of the full image to a manageable size for downloading. The cutout fully showcases the power of Euclid in obtaining extremely sharp images over a large region of the sky in one single pointing. Although this image represents only a small part of the entire colour view, the same quality as shown here is available over the full field. The full view of NGC 6397 at the highest definition can be explored on ESASky.
[Image description]
This square astronomical image is speckled with hundreds of thousands of stars visible across the black expanse of space. The stars vary in size and colour, from blue to white to yellow/red. Blue stars are younger and red stars are older. More stars are located at the centre of the image, where they are bound together by gravity into a spheroid conglomeration – also called a globular cluster. Some of the stars are a bit larger than the rest, with six diffraction spikes.
Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Here's a shot I snapped of the Messier 4 Globular Star Cluster on May 14, 2015 at Frosty Drew Observatory in Charlestown, Rhode Island, USA. Messier 4 is found in the constellation Scorpius and has a size of about 75 light years in diameter. Residing at only 7,200 light years distant, M4 is one of the two closest Globular Clusters to Earth.
Photo Details:
Camera: Canon 60D MagicLantern
1370mm
f/9
ISO: 5000
Exposure: 60 seconds * 20 frames
This is a median composite of 20 individual shots to reduce noise.
-Scott MacNeill
Messier 3 (aka M3 or NGC 5272) is a globular cluster in the constellation Canes Venatici. At 34K lights years from Earth, it is about 8 billion years old and contains about 500,000 stars.
I find globular clusters quite difficult to process, and this was no exception. This was about my tenth iteration, and my last unless I add more data to it. 79 x 3 minute subs @ iso1600.
I'd like pinpoint stars, but that ain't gonna happen with a DSLR :)
Usual kit - saves me typing it out each time :)
Aberkenfig, South Wales
Lat +51.542 Long -3.593
Skywatcher 254mm Newtonian Reflector, Olympus E410 at prime focus. EQ6 Syntrek Mount.
23 x 50s at ISO 400
Also 10 dark frames.
Imaging session commenced at 01:28 UT
Processed with Deep Sky Stacker and final levels adjusted with G.I.M.P.
The final image is slightly cropped but it still displays some coma towards the edges. This is one drawback of a parabolic f/4.8 Newtonian.
Jupiter, the four Galilean Moons and the globular cluster NGC 6278 (fuzzy ball below right center).
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120mm ED Triplet APO Refractor, Canon 6D stock camera, ISO 3200, single 30-second exposure, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Image date: 22 June 2019. Location: The Dark Side Observatory in Weatherly, PA.
NGC 5466 è un ammasso globulare nella costellazione di Bootes: dista 50000 anni luce ed ha una concentrazione molto bassa di stelle, tanto da essere risolto fino nel nucleo. Studi recenti (2007) hanno mostrato che questo ammasso è in disgregazione a causa delle forze mareali di interazione con la Via Lattea: la massa persa dall’ammasso ha dato origine ad una “corrente stellare”, ovvero una associazione di stelle che ruota attorno alla galassia fino ad assumere l’aspetto di un nastro
(vd. anche it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrente_stellare e un interessante articolo in inglese academic.oup.com/mnras/article/380/2/749/1014346)
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NGC 5466 is a globular cluster inside Bootes constellation. Its distance is 50000 light year and it is characterized by a very small concentration of stars. Recent studies (2007) shows that this globular has tidal tails very extended (more than 45°) due to very slow dissolution caused by the effects of tides at perigalacticon and disc-crossing (more info in this interesting article academic.oup.com/mnras/article/380/2/749/1014346)
Technical data
Image taken on 22 January/23 February 2020 from Promiod (Aosta Valley, Italy)
RC12 GSO Truss (diameter 304mm, focal lenght 2432mm)
Mount GM2000 HPSII
CCD Moravian G3-16200 with filters Astrodon Tru-Balance Gen2 E-Serie LRGB
Exposures and sensor temperature:
L 20x300" -30C
R 10x300” -30C, G 10x300” -30C, B 10x300” -30C
All in bin2
Total exposure 4.2h
Guide with OAG Moravian and Moravian camera G1-0301
The whole imaging session was managed by Voyager sw
Post processing with Pixinsight 1.8 and DxO Photolab 3
Imaged with a Revolution Imager 2 Video Camera (RI2), 15-second video capture with the RI2 Mini-DVR, through a 8-inch Celestron Celestar-8 Deluxe Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector telescope. The AVI video file was then pre-processed using PPIP, then aligned, stacked and wavelets applied in Registax 6.
A globular cluster in the constellation of Centaurus, considered the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way, it is so different from other globular clusters that it is theorized that it may have been a dwarf galaxy that was absorbed by the Milky Way. It is 15,800 lights years distance from Earth. It is visible with the naked eye in the southern hemisphere as big as the full Moon. It contains several million stars, the stars in the core are so crowded about a 0.1 light year apart from each other. A study in 2008 shows evidence that there is a Black Hole in its core.
Image Profile:
Location: Siding Springs, Australia
Type: LRGB
Frames: LRGB 7x300; 6x120; 6x120; 6x180
Imaging times: from 20140313
Hardware:
-Main scope: Planetwave 20”
-CCD: FLI PL6303E with FW and Astrodon filters.
-Mount: Planetwave Ascension 200HR
Imaging Applications:
-iTelescope
Processing Applications:
-CCD Stack
-Photoshop cs3
Messier 2 or M2 (also designated NGC 7089) is a globular cluster in the constellation Aquarius. M2 is about 55,000 light-years distant from Earth. At 175 light-years in diameter, it is one of the larger globular clusters known. The cluster is rich, compact, and significantly elliptical. It is 12.5 billion years old and one of the older globular clusters associated with the Milky Way galaxy.
Observation data (J2000 epoch)
Class: II
Constellation: Aquarius
Right ascension: 21h 33m 27.02s
Declination: –00° 49′ 23.7″
Distance: 55,000 ly
Apparent magnitude (V): 6.5
Apparent dimensions (V): 16.0′
Tech Specs: Sky-Watcher Esprit 120ED Telescope, ZWO ASI2600MC camera running at 0F, 33x60 seconds guided exposures, Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro pier mounted, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in DSS and PixInsight. Image Date: August 11, 2023. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
This Hubble image shows about 35,000 stars near the center of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae. Stars are packed tightly near the cluster’s core (upper left) and become more spread out farther away from the core.
The picture depicts the stars' natural colors and tells scientists about their composition and age. For example, the red stars denote bright red giants nearing the end of their lives, while the more common yellow stars are similar to our middle-aged Sun.
The image was taken in 1999 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
Credit: NASA and Ron Gilliland (Space Telescope Science Institute)
For more information, visit:
spacetelescope.org/images/opo0033b/
hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2000/33/1005-Image.html
Globular Cluster Messier 69 (M69 or NGC 6637) is a cluster that can be found in the constellation Sagittarius. This cluster was photographed in July 16, 2015 and the final image is a stack of 14 thirty-second exposures at ISO 3200 using a Canon 6D at prime focus of a Celestron 6″ telescope. The imaging system was mounted on an iOptron ZEQ25 equatorial mount.
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. That instrument was replaced by the Wide Field Camera 3 during the 2009 Hubble servicing mission. Wide Field Camera 3's superior resolving power and a wider field of view is obvious in this fantastically detailed image.
Terzan 1 is a globular cluster, a group of typically ancient stars tied tightly together by gravity, that lies about 22,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Cohen
For more information, visit: esahubble.org/images/potw2241a/