Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Ara (Ara)  ·  Contains:  NGC 6397
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The aging and beautiful NGC 6397, Geoff Healey
The aging and beautiful NGC 6397
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The aging and beautiful NGC 6397

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
The aging and beautiful NGC 6397, Geoff Healey
The aging and beautiful NGC 6397
Powered byPixInsight

The aging and beautiful NGC 6397

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Description

This ancient stellar jewellery box, a globular cluster called NGC 6397, glitters with the light from hundreds of thousands of stars.The cluster’s blue stars are near the end of their lives. These stars have used up their hydrogen fuel that makes them shine. Now they are converting helium to energy in their cores, which fuses at a higher temperature and appears blue. The reddish glow is from red giant stars that have consumed their hydrogen fuel and have expanded in size. The myriad small white objects include stars like our Sun. Courtesy eashubble.orgNGC6397 is in the constellation of Ara and is around 7,800 light years from us. It contains an estimated 400,000 stars and is estimated to be about 13.4 billion years old.

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The aging and beautiful NGC 6397, Geoff Healey