The Hubble Space Telescope has sent a photograph of the globular star cluster Terzan 9 in the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
This was reported by the joint observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA.
The photo was taken as part of the Hubble program, which explores globular clusters located in the center of the Milky Way. The central region of the galaxy contains closely related groups of stars, and this region is rich in interstellar dust.
It is this dust that has made it difficult to study spherical clusters near the galactic center because it absorbs the light of stars and can even change the colors of stars in these clusters. Hubbleʼs sensitivity has allowed astronomers to measure how the colors of these globular clusters have changed with interstellar dust, and thus determine their age.
- In February, the Hubble Space Telescope, with its wide-angle WFC3 universal camera, photographed a pair of interacting galaxies, Arp 298, located in the constellation Pegasus.