Daily Telescope: A shiny cluster of stars in a nearby galaxy

Enlarge / This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a globular cluster called NGC 1651. (credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Girardi, F. Niederhofer)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It’s April 2, and today’s photo comes from the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. It showcases a globular cluster, NGC 1651, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

This cluster of stars is about 120 light-years across. Like other such globular clusters, it is generally spherical, as the stars are bound to one another by gravity. Thus, there is a higher concentration of stars near the center of the cluster.