Close-up: NGC 6717—A Glittering Globular Cluster in Sagittarius | Hubble

Close-up: NGC 6717—A Glittering Globular Cluster in Sagittarius | Hubble

This star-studded image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope depicts NGC 6717. It lies more than 20,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. NGC 6717 is a globular cluster, a roughly spherical collection of stars tightly bound together by gravity. Globular clusters contain more stars in their centers than their outer fringes, as this image aptly demonstrates. The sparsely populated edges of NGC 6717 are in stark contrast to the sparkling collection of stars at its center.

The center of the image also contains some interlopers from closer to home. Bright foreground stars close to Earth are surrounded by criss-cross diffraction spikes formed by starlight interacting with the structures supporting Hubble’s secondary mirror.

The area of the night sky that contains the constellation Sagittarius also has the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is filled with light-absorbing gas and dust. This absorption of light is what astronomers refer to as extinction. It makes studying globular clusters near the Galactic center a challenging endeavor. To determine the properties of NGC 6717, astronomers relied on a combination of Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Sarajedini

Duration: 30 seconds
Release Date: Sept. 6, 2021

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