A Gathering of Ancient Stars

Day 17 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a gathering of ancient stars. The globular cluster NGC 2005, featured in this Hubble image, is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy and which itself lies about 162,000 light-years from Earth. Globular clusters are densely packed and can constitute tens of thousands or millions of stars. Their density means that they are tightly gravitationally bound and are therefore very stable. This stability contributes to their longevity—globular clusters can be billions of years old, and as such, many of them comprise very old stars. Studying globular clusters in space can be a little like studying fossils on Earth: Where fossils give insights into the characteristics of ancient plants and animals, globular clusters illuminate the characteristics of ancient stars.

See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.