This object is a faint globular cluster located in the southern constellation of Ophiuchus at a declination of -30 degrees. The object is the small 4 arc-minute diameter dense area of stars at the center of the image. Estimates of its distance from us vary quite a bit. An estimate this year placed it at a distance of about 21,000 light years, approximately 6,000 light years from the galactic center (within the Milky Way central bulge region).
The object is called HP 1, discovered in 1954 and named for the Haute-Provence Observatory in France where the discovery occurred. It is one of the oldest globular clusters discovered in our Milky Way, with an estimated age of 12.8 billion years. This means it was born less than one billion years after the Big Bang.
This article from a few months ago is very interesting. It describes the use of advanced adaptive optics technology at the huge 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile to capture unprecedented detail at the core of this cluster. I have attached a comparison between their image and mine of a 1 arc-minute wide view of the core. Of course, their image is a "bit" better - they are on top of a mountain, their telescope diameter is 63x larger, they are using adaptive optics, and they are at the exact same latitude as the object instead of 60 degrees north. I wasn't surprised at the difference in image quality, but I was surprised at the difference in brightness for many of the stars. I think that may be because their image was developed using near-infrared data.
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