Hubble Space Telescope Zooms in on NGC 6652

NASA has released a high-resolution close-up image of the globular cluster NGC 6652 captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

This Hubble image shows NGC 6652, a globular cluster located around 30,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Sarajedini / G. Piotto.

Globular clusters are densely packed systems of stars, gravitationally bound into a single structure between 100 and 200 light-years across.

They contain hundreds of thousands or perhaps a million stars. The large mass in the rich stellar center of a cluster pulls the stars inward to form a ball of stars.

Globular clusters are among the oldest known objects in the Universe and are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation.

It is thought that every galaxy has a population of globular clusters. Our Milky Way Galaxy hosts at least 150 such objects and a few more are likely to exist hidden behind the Galaxy’s thick disk.

“Globular clusters are stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters containing anywhere between tens of thousands and millions of stars,” Hubble astronomers said.

“The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars in globular clusters is what gives these star-studded objects their regular, spherical shape.”

NGC 6652 lies in the constellation of Sagittarius, just under 30,000 light-years from Earth and only 6,500 light-years from the Galactic center.

Otherwise known as C 1832-330 or GCl 98, the cluster was first discovered on June 28, 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop.

“The glittering, glitzy contents of NGC 6652 sparkle in this star-studded image from Hubble,” the astronomers said.

“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.”

The color image of NGC 6652 was taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

The image combines observations gathered in five different filters, bringing together ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light to show off the cluster in all its glory.

“As well as two instruments, this image draws on two different observing programs from two different teams,” the researchers said.

“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 used a trio of exquisitely sensitive filters in the WFC3 instrument to disentangle the proportions of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in globular clusters such as NGC 6652.”