NASA / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of a densely populated globular cluster known as NGC 1841, located 162,000 light-years from Earth within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). On a related note, the Milky Way galaxy is actually orbited by tens of known satellite galaxies that are far closer than Andromeda, the largest and brightest of which is the LMC.
What you’re looking at here is a massive cluster of stars and most of them are very small as well as uniform in size. The majority are bluish and cluster more densely together towards the center of the image, while others appear larger in the foreground. Pan out to the corners, and the stars give way to a dark background.
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The LMC is home to many globular clusters. These celestial bodies fall somewhere between open clusters — which are much less dense and tightly bound — and small, compact galaxies. Increasingly sophisticated observations have revealed the stellar populations and other characteristics of globular clusters to be varied and complex, and it is not well understood how these tightly-packed clusters form,” said the European Space Agency.
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