Two Great Globular Clusters Seen by Hubble: Pismis 26 and Ruprecht 106 - By Nancy_A
Astronomers estimate the age of this particular cluster to be 12 billion years old.
The stars in globular clusters are held together by mutual gravitational attraction. Globular clusters cover a relatively small region in space, with most no more than a couple dozen parsecs across. But each one contains hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of stars. Sutter says that puts the average distance between stars at about 1 light-year, but in their cores the stars pack together over a thousand times more tightly than in our own neighborhood.
Ruprecht 106 contains a bit of a mystery. Even though most of the constituent stars in globular clusters stars likely formed at approximately the same time and location, research with Hubble has shown that is not always true. It turns out that almost all globular clusters contain groups of stars with distinct chemical compositions, which means those groups of stars within the clusters have very slightly different ages or compositions from the rest of the cluster.
However, a handful of globular clusters do not possess these multiple populations of stars, and Ruprecht 106 is a member of that group. Astronomers will likely use the James Webb Space Telescope to study enigmatic clusters like Ruprecht 106 to learn more about the stars and their life cycles.
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