                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

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                               2024 October 25

                       Globular Star Cluster NGC 6752
         Image Credit & Copyright: Massimo Di Fusco, 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, NGC 6752 follows
   clusters Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae, and Messier 22 as the fourth
   brightest globular in planet Earth's night sky. It holds over 100
   thousand stars in a sphere about 100 light-years in diameter.
   Telescopic 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 thought to be formed by star mergers and collisions in
   the dense stellar environment at the cluster's core. This 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
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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