[Home]Globular cluster

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A globular cluster is a cluster of stars that is spherical in shape and extremely dense towards it's core. They are distributed around a galaxy, but not within it, orbitting in the region known as the galactic halo. They are comprised of old stars, similar to the bulge of a spiral galaxy. Omega Centauri is quite an obvious globular, visible to the naked eye as a third magnitude object, a "fuzzy patch" similar to most other deep sky objects. It's also a very powerful globular, it's mass being more than the mass of some small galaxies and containing upwards of a billion stars. It's probable that it is the former nucleus of a galaxy that was once orbitting the Milky Way but is now totally engulfed with only the dense nucleus remaining as a globular cluster. The slightly more powerful G1, associated with M31, is also probably of this origin.

Globulars are very old, they formed along with the host galaxy.


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Edited November 24, 2001 6:12 am by 195.92.168.xxx (diff)
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