Friday, September 09, 2022

Star Cluster Terzan 5 at The Milky Way's Center | ESO

Star Cluster Terzan 5 at The Milky Way's Center | ESO



Peering through the thick dust clouds of our galaxy's central parts (the "bulge") with an amazing amount of detail, a team of astronomers has revealed an unusual mix of stars in the stellar grouping known as Terzan 5. Never observed anywhere in the bulge before, this peculiar cocktail of stars suggests that Terzan 5 is in fact one of the bulge's primordial building blocks, most likely the relic of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way during its very early days.

Distance: 25,000 light years

This near-infrared image was obtained with the Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. Observations in two bands (J and K) were combined. The field of view is 40 arcseconds across.


Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/F. Ferraro

Release Date: November 25, 2009


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