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M5 Globular Cluster, Rick Veregin

M5 Globular Cluster

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M5 Globular Cluster, Rick Veregin

M5 Globular Cluster

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Description

My 2nd attempt at a globular cluster--seeing average.

M5 is one of the oldest globular clusters in our galaxy, around 12 billion years old, so you would expect all the stars to be old and red. Yet there are still more than expected of the blue stars, called blue stragglers. More than half of these blue stragglers are a result of collisions between stars, as the stars are so closely packed that with time they can actually collide, but the rest have "stolen" mass from other nearby stars, continuing to burn as if they were young blue stars.

It would be amazing to be in one of these clusters and see thousands of bright stars in the sky, but having another star collide with one's sun sounds pretty nasty.

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M5 Globular Cluster, Rick Veregin