Scientists captured tens of thousands of stars in a single image for the first time

The Hubble Space Telescope has made a breakthrough: for the first time, the mysterious globular cluster ESO 591-12 (Palomar 8) has been captured in detail - a majestic sphere where tens of thousands of stars are held together by the force of gravity. The captivating image shows a bright cluster of stars of different colors: blue stars blaze with heat, while red luminaries emit a cooler glow. This is reported by NASA.

Globular clusters form at the dawn of galaxy life, when giant clouds of gas and dust collapse under their own weight. The uniqueness of such clusters is that all stars in them are born almost simultaneously from a single cloud of matter, making them true cosmic time capsules that store secrets of the early history of our Milky Way.

Observations of Palomar 8 were conducted as part of the large-scale Hubble Missing Globular Clusters Survey project, which aims to study 34 previously unexplored globular clusters of our galaxy. The data obtained will allow astronomers to determine the age and distance of these cosmic treasuries, as well as unravel the mysteries of the structure and origin of star clusters both in the central regions and on the periphery of the Milky Way.