Astronomy Picture of the Day [1]Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2024 October 25 [2]See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available. Globular Star Cluster NGC 6752 Image Credit & [3]Copyright: [4]Massimo Di Fusco, [5]Aygen Erkaslan Explanation: Some 13,000 light-years away toward the southern constellation Pavo, the globular star cluster NGC 6752 roams the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Over 10 billion years old, [6]NGC 6752 follows clusters [7]Omega Centauri, [8]47 Tucanae, and [9]Messier 22 as the fourth brightest globular in planet Earth's night sky. It holds over 100 thousand [10]stars in a sphere about 100 light-years in diameter. Telescopic [11]explorations of NGC 6752 have found that a remarkable fraction of the stars near the cluster's core, are multiple star systems. They also reveal the presence of blue straggle stars, stars which appear to be too young and massive to exist in a cluster whose stars are all expected to be at least twice as old as the Sun. The blue stragglers are [12]thought to be formed by star mergers and collisions in the dense stellar environment at the cluster's [13]core. This [14]sharp color composite also features the cluster's ancient red giant stars in yellowish hues. (Note: The bright, spiky blue star about 8 o'clock from the cluster center is a foreground star along the line-of-sight to NGC 6752) Tomorrow's picture: pixels in space __________________________________________________________________ [15]< | [16]Archive | [17]Submissions | [18]Index | [19]Search | [20]Calendar | [21]RSS | [22]Education | [23]About APOD | [24]Discuss | [25]> __________________________________________________________________ Authors & editors: [26]Robert Nemiroff ([27]MTU) & [28]Jerry Bonnell ([29]UMCP) NASA Official: Amber Straughn [30]Specific rights apply. [31]NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices A service of: [32]ASD at [33]NASA / [34]GSFC, [35]NASA Science Activation & [36]Michigan Tech. U. References 1. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html 2. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2410/NGC6752_DiFusco.jpg 3. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html#srapply 4. https://www.astrobin.com/users/massimo.difusco/ 5. https://www.astrobin.com/users/a.erkaslan/ 6. http://spider.seds.org/spider/MWGC/n6752.html 7. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190824.html 8. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121206.html 9. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-messier-catalog/messier-22 10. http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2010/07/ngc-6752-as-stereo-pair-3d.html 11. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997ApJ...474..701R 12. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0409001 13. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120210.html 14. https://www.astrobin.com/4aavmk/C/ 15. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241024.html 16. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html 17. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/apsubmit2015.html 18. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/aptree.html 19. https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search 20. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/allyears.html 21. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod.rss 22. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/edlinks.html 23. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html 24. http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=241025 25. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241026.html 26. http://www.phy.mtu.edu/faculty/Nemiroff.html 27. http://www.phy.mtu.edu/ 28. https://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/jbonnell/www/bonnell.html 29. http://www.astro.umd.edu/ 30. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html#srapply 31. https://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/HP_Privacy.html 32. https://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/ 33. https://www.nasa.gov/ 34. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/ 35. https://science.nasa.gov/learners 36. http://www.mtu.edu/