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Messier 5

Messier 5’s stars formed more than 12 billion years ago.

Distance

25,000 light-years

Apparent Magnitude

6.7

constellation

Serpens

object type

Globular Cluster

Hubble view of M5
This composite Hubble image of Messier 5 was taken with Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. It holds exposures taken in visible and infrared light and features over 100,000 stars.
ESA/Hubble & NASA

Discovered in 1702 by the German astronomer Gottfried Kirch, Messier 5 (M5) is one of the oldest globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.7 and is located some 25,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens (the Snake). M5 appears as a patch of light in a pair of binoculars and is best viewed during June.

Hubble captures M5 in stunning detail, resolving the patch of faint, fuzzy light into individual stars. A majority of M5’s stars formed more than 12 billion years ago, making it one of the Milky Way's oldest globular clusters. However, there are some unexpected newcomers on the scene, adding some vitality to this aging population.

Astronomers think stars in globular clusters form in the same stellar nursery and grow old together. The most massive stars age quickly, exhausting their fuel supply in less than a million years, ending their lives in spectacular supernova explosions. This process should have left this ancient cluster with only old, low-mass stars, which, as they have aged and cooled, have become red giants, while the oldest stars have evolved even further into blue horizontal branch stars.

Yet astronomers have spotted many young, blue stars amongst the ancient stars in this cluster. They think these laggard youngsters, called blue stragglers, formed either by collisions between stars or other stellar interactions. Such events are easy to imagine in densely populated globular clusters, in which up to a few million stars are tightly packed together.

A cluster of mostly blue stars, chunks of pinkish-white and orange stars.
Hubble captured this stunning close-up view that spans about 20 light-years near the central region of M5. Even close to its dense core at the left, the cluster's aging red and blue giant stars and rejuvenated blue stragglers stand out in yellow and blue hues in the sharp color image. The image was captured using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and includes ultraviolet, visible/optical, and infrared light.
NASA, ESA

For more information about Hubble’s observations of M5, see:

This star chart for M5 represents the view from mid-northern latitudes for the given month and time.
Image courtesy of Stellarium
Annotated star chart of Messier 5 for the southern hemisphere.
This star chart for M5 represents the view from mid-southern latitudes for the given month and time.
Image courtesy of Stellarium

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