In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the brilliance of an ancient globular cluster named NGC 3201.
This Hubble image shows the globular cluster NGC 3201. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.
Globular star clusters are huge spheres of tens of thousands of stars.
They are among the oldest known stellar systems in the Universe and date back to near the beginning of galaxy growth and evolution.
They are found around all large galaxies, but their origin and role in galaxy formation remain tantalizingly unclear.
The globular cluster NGC 3201 lies about 16,300 light-years away and is visible toward the southern constellation of Vela.
This sparkling group of stars was discovered on May 28, 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, who described it as a ‘pretty large, pretty bright’ object that becomes ‘rather irregular’ towards its center.
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen astronomer Benjamin Giesers and co-authors recently discovered a stellar-mass black hole lurking at the heart of NGC 3201 — its position was revealed by the strange movements of a star being quickly flung around a massive, invisible counterpart.
NGC 3201 also has some strange properties which make it unique amongst the over 150 globular clusters belonging to our Milky Way Galaxy.
It has an extremely fast velocity with respect to the Sun and its orbit is retrograde, meaning that it moves speedily in the opposite direction to the galactic centre, which it orbits.
The unusual behavior of this cluster suggests that it may have extragalactic origins, but at some point was captured by the Milky Way’s gravity.
However, the chemical makeup of this intriguing cluster tells a different story — the stars within NGC 3201 are chemically very similar to those of other galactic globular clusters, implying that they formed at a similar location and time to their neighbors.
Whether this mysterious cluster was adopted by our Galaxy or has for some reason evolved very differently to the family of clusters it grew up with, it is certainly an unusual astronomical beauty.
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