This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture options the sector of stars that’s NGC 1786. This globular cluster is situated within the Massive Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite tv for pc galaxy of the Milky Means Galaxy that’s roughly 160,000 light-years away from Earth. NGC 1786 itself is within the constellation Dorado. It was found within the yr 1835 by Sir John Herschel.
The information for this picture comes from an observing program that compares outdated globular clusters in close by dwarf galaxies — the LMC, the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy — to globular clusters within the Milky Means galaxy. Our galaxy accommodates over 150 of those outdated, spherical collections of tightly-bound stars, which astronomers have studied in depth — particularly with Hubble photos like this one, which present them in beforehand unattainable element. Being very steady and long-lived, globular clusters act as galactic time capsules, preserving stars from the earliest levels of a galaxy’s formation.
Astronomers as soon as thought that stars in a globular cluster all shaped collectively at about the identical time, however the examine of outdated globular clusters in our galaxy uncovered a number of populations of stars with totally different ages. To make use of globular clusters as historic markers, we should perceive how they kind and the place these stars of various ages come from. This observing program examined outdated globular clusters like NGC 1786 in these exterior galaxies to see in the event that they, too, comprise a number of populations of stars. This analysis can inform us extra about how the LMC initially shaped, but in addition the Milky Means Galaxy, too.
Textual content Credit score: ESA/Hubble
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD