The Hubble Telescope sees half a million stars in a wild place

The term "globular group" does not invoke by itself a vision of beauty, but real objects in space are among the most remarkable that the Hubble Space Telescope has ever seen.

The European Space Agency has described the Messier 3 globular cluster, object of Hubble's new view, as "one of the most beautiful of all". It is 8 billion years old and contains half a million stars.

Globular clusters are collections of spherical stars. Messier 3 is a bit unusual, though. It contains many variable stars whose brightness changes over time. Scientists have located 274 of these scintillating in Messier 3.

As long as we are talking about spatial terms, here is another one: "blue latecomers". These stars are more blue and brighter than their brothers. They look younger than their neighbors, but they look much more like vampires.

ESA reported in 2009 that blue sleds could form by siphoning off fresh hydrogen from more massive star companions.

"The new fuel supply allows the smaller star to heat, more and more blue and more and more hot.It behaves like a star at an early stage of its evolution," said the lorry. ; ESA. You can spot a group of these bluish freeloaders in the Messier 3 Hubble image.

Hubble is on a roll with space clusters. Discover the view from the telescope of one "open cluster" called the wild duck cluster. It's a very different look from Messier 3, but also stunning in itself.