Hubble Space Telescope discovers a celestial fossil

he Hubble Space Telescope This crowded group of stars, which corresponds to the globular cluster – or “celestial fossil” – was captured by NGC 1841 in Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC) is 162,000 light-years away.

the Space galaxies Such LMCs are gravitationally bound into orbits around a more massive host galaxy. We usually think about Andromeda Galaxy As the closest companion galaxy to our galaxy, it is more accurate to say that the Andromeda Galaxy is the closest galaxy that is not in orbit around the Milky Way.

In fact, dozens of Galaxies Satellites orbit our galaxy and are much closer to us Andromeda. The largest and brightest is the LMC, which can be easily seen with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere under dark sky conditions and away from light pollution. a pot.

The LMC hosts many globular clusters. These celestial objects fall somewhere between open clusters, which are much less dense and tightly packed, and small, compact galaxies. Increasingly sophisticated observations reveal that stellar populations and the properties of globular clusters are diverse and complex, and we have yet to fully understand how these tightly packed clusters of stars form.

However, there is a certain symmetry in all globular clusters: they are very stable and maintain their shape for a long time, which means that they are usually very old and contain a large number of very old stars. the Spherical clusters They are like celestial “fossils”. Just as fossils provide information about the early development of life on Earth, globular clusters like NGC 1841 can provide information about very early star formation in galaxies.