Hubble Captured Globular Cluster Messier 70


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This picture was obtained with the Wide Field Camera of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The field of view is around 3.3 by 3.3 arcminutes. Quarters are always tight in globular clusters, where the mutual hold of gravity binds together hundreds of thousands of stars in a small region of space. Messier 70 has undergone what is known as a core collapse. In these clusters, even more stars squeeze into the object’s core than on average, such that the brightness of the cluster increases steadily towards its center. The legions of stars in a globular cluster orbit about a shared center of gravity. Some stars maintain relatively circular orbits, while others loop out into the cluster’s fringes. As the stars interact with each other over time, lighter stars tend to pick up speed and migrate out toward the cluster’s edges, while the heavier stars slow and congregate in orbits toward the center. This huddling effect produces the denser, brighter centers characteristic of core-collapsed clusters. About a fifth of the more than 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way have undergone a core collapse. Although many globular clusters call the galaxy’s edges home, Messier 70 orbits close to the Milky Way’s center, around 30 000 light-years away from the Solar System. It is remarkable that Messier 70 has held together so well, given the strong gravitational pull of the Milky Way’s hub. Messier 70 is only about 68 light-years in diameter and can be seen, albeit very faintly, with binoculars in dark skies in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer).