‘Glistening’ cluster teeming with stars captured by Hubble telescope
FILE - The teeming stars of the globular cluster NGC 6544 glisten in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This cluster of tightly bound stars lies more than 8,000 light-years away from Earth and is, like all globular clusters, a dense (ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Lewin, F. R. Ferraro)
It almost takes your breath away.
NASA and the European Space Agency’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a truly stunning image of a cluster of stars "glistening" in the sky some eight light years away from Earth.
The photograph, released by NASA, shows the countless stars – of all sizes – illuminating in space.
The globular cluster, known to scientists as NGC 6544, is made up of tens of thousands of stars, according to NASA.
Globular clusters are tightly packed, and typically symmetrical, collections of stars, according to EarthSky.org. The stars have somewhat of a focal point and mostly orbit in the extended stellar halos surrounding spiral galaxies.
Globular clusters contain some of the oldest stars in the galaxy. Some of these ancient stars are estimated to be between 11 and 13 billion years old, according to EarthSky.
The clusters typically contain hundreds of thousands of stars, except for Omega Centauri, which astronomers have determined is home to millions of stars.
The Milky Way galaxy alone contains over 150 globular clusters while our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, has well over 300.
This story was reported from Los Angeles.