The Hubble team has released a very beautiful close-up shot of the star-studded globular cluster NGC 6544.
NGC 6544 is located more than 8,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius.
Also known as GCl 87, this globular cluster hosts several tens of thousands of stars.
NGC 6544 was discovered in 1784 by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel, who looked at it through his 47-cm (18.4-inch) reflector.
“NGC 6544 lies in the constellation Sagittarius, close to the vast Lagoon Nebula, a hazy labyrinth of gas and dust sculpted by the fierce winds of newly born stars,” Hubble astronomers said.
“The Lagoon Nebula is truly colossal — even by astronomical standards — and measures 55 light-years across and 20 light-years from top to bottom.”
“Previous Hubble images of the nebula incorporated infrared observations to reveal young stars and intricate structures that would be obscured at visible wavelengths by clouds of gas and dust.”
The new image of NGC 6544 includes ultraviolet and optical observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
“The ACS observation was designed to find a visible counterpart to the radio pulsar discovered in NGC 6544,” the astronomers explained.
“A pulsar is the rapidly spinning remnant of a dead star, emitting twin beams of electromagnetic radiation like a vast astronomical lighthouse.”
NGC 6544’s pulsar rotates particularly quickly, and the astronomers turned to Hubble to help determine how this object evolved.
“The WFC3 observation which contributed data to this image was also designed to find the visible counterparts of objects detected at other electromagnetic wavelengths,” they said.
“Instead of matching up sources to a pulsar, however, we used Hubble to search for the…
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