Messier 79 is a ball of stars (globular cluster) in the constellation Lepus (The Hare), and is located 41,000 light-years from Earth. Messier 79 is es
Messier 79 is a ball of stars (globular cluster) in the constellation Lepus (The Hare), and is located 41,000 light-years from Earth. Messier 79 is estimated to be billion years old and contains about 150,000 stars, most being red giants. Some fainter blue stars known as blue stragglers glow in blue light, mimicking the appearance of hot, young stars. Blue stragglers form either by the merger of stars in a binary system or by the collision of two unrelated stars in the galaxy's core. Charles Messier, the 18th century French astronomer, catalogued over 100 galaxies and clusters. Through the telescopes available at the time, comets, nebulae, globular clusters and galaxies appeared just as faint, diffuse blobs. This image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
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Photo credit: © Simon Stone / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: -, astronomical, astronomy, astrophysical, astrophysics, blue, charles, cluster, deep, giants, globular, lepus, m79, messier, object, objects, red, sky, space, stars, stellar, stragglers, telescope
