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For more than 30 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been one of the main tools for examining cosmic objects in the visible light range, capturing views of everything from distant galaxies to beautiful nebulae to the planets in our solar system.
An image shared this week from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a globular cluster called Terzan 2, with a blanket of twinkling stars that can be seen by the thousands across the blackness of the sky.
"Global clusters are stable and bound by the gravitational force of clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars found in a variety of galaxies," the Hubble scientists explain. "The intense gravitational attraction between closely packed stars gives globular clusters a regular spherical shape.
As an image of Terzan 2 shows, the hearts of the globular clusters are crowded with many twinkling stars," Digitartlends reported.
If this image sounds familiar, it could be because it looks similar to a previous Hubble image showing another globular cluster called Terzan 9, despite its similar appearance, in different regions of the sky. Terzan 9 is in the constellation Sagittarius, while Terzan 2 is in Scorpio constellation.
Both images were taken using two of Hubble's instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3, at a concert.
“Although there is only one primary mirror, the Hubble design allows multiple instruments to examine astronomical objects,” the Hubble scientists wrote. “Light from distant astronomical objects enters Hubble where it is collected by the 8-foot primary mirror. The primary light directs this light into The secondary mirror that reflects the light into the depths of the telescope where smaller mirrors can direct the light to the individual instruments."