Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Coma Berenices (Com)  ·  Contains:  13.00  ·  130 Elektra  ·  IC 858  ·  IC 859  ·  M 53  ·  NGC 5024  ·  NGC 5053
M53 & NGC5053, Sergiy_Vakulenko
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M53 & NGC5053

M53 & NGC5053, Sergiy_Vakulenko
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M53 & NGC5053

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Description

M53 (also known as NGC5024) and NGC5053 are a globular clusters in the Coma Berenices constellation.

Both clusters are metal-poor, meaning the stars have a low abundance of elements other than hydrogen and helium—what astronomers term metallicity. Abundance measurements of cluster members on the red giant branch show that most are first-generation stars.

That is, they did not form from gas recycled from previous generations of stars.

This differs from the majority of globular clusters that are more dominated by second generation stars.

NGC5053 is located less than 1° from Messier 53 and the two have nearly the same distance modulus, which corresponds to a spatial separation of around 2 kpc. There is a tidal bridge joining M53 to NGC 5053, suggesting the pair may have interacted in the past.

In addition, both are a candidate members of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy tidal stream.

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M53 & NGC5053, Sergiy_Vakulenko

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