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Hubble Images a Swarm of Ancient Stars

A bright white cluster of thousands of densely packed stars.
This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Located about 32,600 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction....

This stellar swarm is M80 (NGC 6093), one of the densest of the 147 known globular star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. Located about 28,000 light-years from Earth, M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars, all held together by their mutual gravitational attraction.

Globular clusters are particularly useful for studying stellar evolution, since all of the stars in the cluster have the same age (about 15 billion years), but cover a range of stellar masses. Every star visible in this image is either more highly evolved than, or in a few rare cases more massive than, our own Sun. Especially obvious are the bright red giants, which are stars similar to the Sun in mass that are nearing the ends of their lives.

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Last Updated
May 05, 2025
Contact
Media

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Credits

The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/ STScI/ NASA)