The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an unrivalled snapshot of NGC 1898, a globular cluster in the constellation Dorado.
This Hubble image shows the globular cluster NGC 1898. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
Globular clusters are beehive swarm agglomerations of several hundred thousand stars each.
Astronomers know that these groupings of stars belong to the oldest known objects in the Universe and that they are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation.
The globular cluster NGC 1898, also known as BSDL 2439 and ESO 56-90, is approximately 163,000 light-years away from Earth.
Discovered on November 24, 834 by British astronomer John Herschel, the object belongs to a satellite of the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
The LMC is a dwarf galaxy that hosts a rich population of clusters, making it an ideal laboratory for investigating star formation.
“While we already have a pretty good picture on the globular clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy — still with many unanswered questions — our studies on globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies just started,” Hubble astronomers said.
“The observations of NGC 1898 will help to determine if their properties are similar to the ones found in the Milky Way, or if they have different features, due to being in a different cosmic environment.”
The new image of this globular cluster is a composite created by combining images taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
“The WFC3 observes light ranging from near-infrared to near-ultraviolet wavelengths, while the ACS explores the near-infrared to the ultraviolet,” the astronomers explained.
Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
