Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 (above) have made an unexpected finding. They discovered a dwarf galaxy in our cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years away while studying white dwarf stars within NGC 6752. The aim of their observations was to use these stars to measure the age of the globular cluster, but in the process they made a surprising discovery.
The ultimate firework celebration: gravitational-wave researchers increasingly think that globular clusters –dazzling, celestial “snow globes” populated with hundreds of thousands of closely packed stars– harbor dark “hearts,” loaded with dozens to even hundreds of black holes–by far the greatest concentration of these exotic objects found anywhere in the universe.
