Business
Hubble telescope peers deep into Milky Way galaxy, captures starfield
Us Earthlings inhabit a solar system on one of the great spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.
The legendary Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting Earth, peered inward and captured a vivid image of stars near the center of the Milky Way, a galaxy that’s some 100,000 light-years across (or about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers). NASA posted the image online on Friday.
What can we see? A “sparkling starfield,” writes NASA.
That dense group of stars is called a “globular cluster,” and that’s specifically “globular cluster ESO 520-21,” found near the center of the galaxy. A globular cluster is a “densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars,” writes the European Space Agency.
Poetically, NASA calls them “snow-globe-shaped islands of several hundred thousand ancient stars.”
A “sparkling starfield.”
Credit: ESA / HUBBLE AND NASA / R. COHEN
Star clusters are common in the universe, and because they’re bright, they’re often observed and researched by astronomers.
There are some 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way. As of 2018, NASA had discovered well over 22,000 globular clusters in our ever-expanding universe.
-
Business6 days ago
AI chip startup DEEPX secures $80M Series C at a $529M valuation
-
Entertainment5 days ago
Jinkx Monsoon promises ‘the queerest season of ‘Doctor Who’ you’ve ever seen!’
-
Business5 days ago
StrictlyVC London welcomes Phoenix Court and WEX
-
Business6 days ago
Retell AI lets businesses build ‘voice agents’ to answer phone calls
-
Entertainment5 days ago
How to watch every ‘Law and Order’ online in 2024
-
Entertainment5 days ago
BookTok and teens: What parents need to know
-
Business4 days ago
Why Apple’s ‘Crush’ ad is so misguided
-
Entertainment6 days ago
'House of the Dragon' recap: Every death, ranked by gruesomeness