NASA has released a stunning image snapped by the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope of the globular cluster Messier 62.
This image of Messier 62 is a composite of separate exposures acquired by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instruments. It is based on data obtained through four filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S. Anderson et al.
Messier 62, also known as M62 or NGC 6266, is located in the constellation Ophiuchus, approximately 22,200 light-years away.
Discovered on June 7, 1771, by the French astronomer Charles Messier, this globular cluster is almost 12 billion years old.
Messier 62 is known for being one of the most irregularly shaped globular clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy.
This might be because it is one of the closest globular clusters to the Galactic center and is affected by galactic tidal forces, displacing many of the cluster’s stars toward the southeast.
When globular clusters form, they tend to be somewhat denser towards the center. The more massive the cluster, the denser the center is likely to be. With a mass with almost a million times that of the Sun, Messier 62 is one of the densest of them all.
With so many stars at the center, interactions and mergers occur regularly. Huge stars form and run out of fuel quickly, exploding violently and their remains collapse to form white dwarfs, neutron stars and even black holes.
For many years, it was believed that any black holes that form in a globular cluster would quickly be kicked out due to the violent interactions taking place there.
However, in 2013, a stellar-mass black hole was discovered in Messier 62 — the first ever to be found in a Milky Way globular cluster.
