The stunning and dazzling contents of the NGC 6652 globular cluster come alive in this celestial portrait captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The heart of the cluster is bathed in a soft blue radiance emitted by an array of stars, while a select few foreground stars are embellished with intersecting diffraction spikes. Found within our own Milky Way galaxy, nestled in the constellation Sagittarius, NGC 6652 rests a mere 30,000 light-years away from Earth and a mere 6,500 light-years from the galactic center.
Globular clusters are resilient and gravitationally bound assemblies that house anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of stars. The intense gravitational pull between closely knit stars in these clusters shapes them into the spherical forms that we observe.
This composite image blends data captured by two of Hubble's premier cameras: the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. Furthermore, it draws upon information from two distinct observing projects led by separate teams of astronomers.
The first team embarked on a mission to survey globular clusters within the Milky Way, seeking insights into a range of topics, spanning from the ages of these cosmic entities to the gravitational forces at play in our galaxy as a whole. Simultaneously, a second team of astronomers utilized a trio of exquisitely sensitive filters in Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to decipher the proportions of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen present in globular clusters like NGC 6652.
Source: NASA