The Great Peacock Globular Star Cluster: NGC 6752 (Wide-field view)

The Great Peacock Globular Star Cluster: NGC 6752 (Wide-field view)

This image from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the globular star cluster NGC 6752 about 13,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Pavo (The Peacock). Studies of this cluster using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have unexpectedly revealed that many of the stars do not undergo mass-loss at the end of their lives.

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 star clusters 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. These stars 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.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Caption Credit: ESO/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Release Date: May 29, 2013

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