Omega Centauri (NGC 5139, Caldwell 80) (Charles Pevsner)

Omega Centauri (NGC 5139, Caldwell 80)

Omega Centauri is about 17,000 light-years away. It is the largest cluster of stars visible to us in the Milky Way. It has more than 10 million stars crammed into an area about 150 light years across. (By comparison, there are mere 82 stars within a 75 light year radius of the Sun.)

Globular clusters are so named in comparison with open clusters, which are a smaller group of loosely collected stars. Globular clusters tend to look like a dandelion cloud, while open clusters look like a small spray of stars.

The origin of globular clusters is not well understood. It seems logical and straightforward that they would form together from gigantic molecular clouds, but if that were the case, then the majority of the stars would have the same age and be of similar composition. But that is not true for most globular clusters, virtually all of which have stars of vastly varying ages. But on the other hand, stars in globular clusters have an unusually low heavy-metal content (meaning that there have not been waves of supernovas or other events that create the higher elements in the periodic table), and no known clusters in the Milky Way have active star-forming regions. These facts indicate that globular clusters are some of the oldest objects in the galaxy, because younger generations of stars form from clouds already seeded with heavy elements.

Some globular clusters, including Omega Centauri, are thought to be the remnant cores of dwarf galaxies that have been captured and absorbed into the Milky Way proper. This would be consistent with the varying ages of the stars in Omega Centauri, and especially explains its retrograde orbit within the Milky Way’s plane. The reported discovery of an [url=http:// https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/529002]intermediate-mass black hole[/url] at the center of Omega Centauri would certainly lend credence to this origin story; however, the research has been disputed and the black hole’s existence has not been confirmed.

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Astrometry.net job	4868163
PixInsight job	4UFNG1KQ4F0P2MQR2K1HLV1I06WYKU19
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PixInsight stage	PLATE_SOLVING_IMAGE

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Omega Centauri (NGC 5139, Caldwell 80)

Omega Centauri (NGC 5139, Caldwell 80)

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