Could life exist in a globular cluster? Brighter stars also live shorter lives, and
since globular clusters are old, those stars have died out
. [That means that the] predominant stars in globular clusters are faint, long-lived red dwarfs. Any potentially habitable planets they host would orbit nearby and be relatively safe from stellar interactions.
What if we lived in a globular cluster?
To live on an Earth in a globular cluster would mean that
the cluster’s stars (if they were like our Sun) would combine to create a night sky at around 20 times brighter than Earth’s night sky at full Moon
.
Can planets form in globular clusters?
But
astronomers have managed to find one planet in a globular cluster
: PSR B1620-26 (AB) b in M4. This planet is actually orbiting two stars, represented by the AB in the name. Those stars also happen to be pulsars — the leftover cores of long-dead stars, which emit very precisely timed radio pulses.
What is the expected lifetime of a globular cluster?
What is unusual about globular clusters?
What is unusual about globular clusters?
Their stars are among the oldest in the universe
.
Are there black holes in globular clusters?
The globular clusters M15 (left) in our Milky Way and G1 in the nearby Andromeda galaxy both harbor medium-size black holes at their cores
. Peer deeply into a star system of any size, and you’ll probably find a black hole.
What would it look like in the globular cluster?
In a telescope, a globular cluster looks like
a fuzzy ball, with individual stars at the periphery merging into a solid ball of light towards the center
. However, this is simply because the stars are so close together that they can’t be resolved individually telescopically.
Is a globular cluster bigger than a galaxy?
When comparing the two, a typical globular cluster might contain a mass of 100,000 Suns, whereas the Milky Way has nearly 1 trillion solar masses. In other words,
the Milky Way Galaxy contains 10 million times more mass than a typical globular cluster
.
What star cluster are we in?
No the sun is not part of a cluster. There are several types of clusters that we see in the sky. The most familiar is the “
open cluster
“, like the Pleiades. These are a group of stars that formed together and have remained close.
Do globular clusters have white dwarfs?
Using WFPC2
on the Hubble Space Telescope, we have isolated a sample of 258 white dwarfs (WDs) in the Galactic globular cluster M4
. Fields at three radial distances from the cluster center were observed and sizeable WD populations were found in all three.
Is our Sun a population II star?
The Sun is considered
population I
, a recent star with a relatively high 1.4% metallicity. Note that astrophysics nomenclature considers any element heavier than helium to be a “metal”, including chemical non-metals such as oxygen.
Which cluster is the oldest?
NGC 121
is around 10 billion years old, making it the oldest cluster in its galaxy; all of the SMC’s other globular clusters are 8 billion years old or younger.
Is Earth in a star cluster?
Well,
Earth is located in the universe in the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies
. A supercluster is a group of galaxies held together by gravity. Within this supercluster we are in a smaller group of galaxies called the Local Group. Earth is in the second largest galaxy of the Local Group – a galaxy called the Milky Way.
Can a star become a red giant more than once?
When a low mass star first runs short of hydrogen in its core, it becomes brighter because: The core contracts, raising the temperature and hydrogen burning shell outward. Can a star become a red giant more than once?
Yes, before and after the helium flash.
Why do globular clusters not collapse?
One of the densest globular clusters in the Milky Way, M80 is located roughly 28,000 light-years from Earth and holds hundreds of thousands of stars. What keeps these clusters from collapsing is
the angular momentum of the stars as they orbit the cluster’s center of mass
.
How many globular clusters have been identified in the Milky Way galaxy?
The Milky Way is host to
around 150
known globular clusters, and a few more are likely to exist hidden behind the thick disk of our galaxy.
Do globular clusters spin?
Globular clusters also rotate
, but not as much as a galaxy such as the Milky Way. That’s because the original gas cloud of which the clusters were created was also not rotating rapidly, Richer said. However, a slight rotation is apparent in the clusters because they are a little flattened, showing the motion.
Why can’t Hubble see black holes?
The black hole traps light due to its intense gravitational field
, hence it cannot be seen directly. The black hole distorts the space around it, which warps images of stars lined up almost directly behind it.
Can Hubble see a black hole?
What is inside a black hole NASA?
The singularity at the center of a black hole is the ultimate no man’s land:
a place where matter is compressed down to an infinitely tiny point, and all conceptions of time and space completely break down
. And it doesn’t really exist. Something has to replace the singularity, but we’re not exactly sure what.
How far apart are stars in a globular cluster?
The stars in a globular cluster are on average about
1 light year apart
, and can be as close together as the size of our solar system, while the average distance to any of the stars in our galaxy is about 5 light years.
What would the night sky look like from the center of the galaxy?
If we found ourselves on a planet near the Galactic Center, our nighttime sky would light up in
a blazing display every night, filled with stars as bright as the planet Venus looks to us
.
How many galaxy clusters are in the universe?
NARRATOR: The universe contains
about 100 billion
galaxies in gigantic groups called galaxy clusters. Clusters are portions of space where many galaxies, sometimes thousands, are concentrated. These clusters are themselves contained within colossal superclusters.
What is bigger than a nebula?
1 Answer. By nebulae, if you mean the planetary nebulae or supernova nebulae, then
Globular clusters
are bigger than nebulae.
Is nebula bigger than galaxy?
Simply put, the main difference between galaxies and nebulae are an extreme difference in size, as well as their basic structure. A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas, usually tens to hundreds of light years across.
A galaxy is much larger
— usually thousands to hundreds of thousands of light years across.
What’s bigger than the universe?
No, the universe contains all
solar systems, and galaxies
.
Was the sun born in a globular cluster?
At the core of NGC 6357 sits the open cluster Pismis 24.
Our own Sun was born within such a cluster 4.6 billion years ago
. Since then, it and its stellar siblings have dispersed throughout the galaxy, but astronomers are keen to hunt those siblings down.
What cluster was the sun born in?
Messier 67, or M67
, is a hundred-light-year-wide ball of stars that recently passed some crucial “paternity tests” for being the sun’s birthplace. The cluster not only harbors stellar bodies similar in temperature, age, and chemistry to our sun, but M67 also drifts a relatively close 2,900 light-years away.
What is next to the universe?
Why do we not observe O and B stars in globular clusters?
Why are there no massive O or B stars in globular clusters?
Globular clusters are very old and almost totally lacking in the gas and dust needed for new stars to form
. Both O and B stars, which are the largest, require a lot of gas and dust to form.
What is the relationship between globular clusters and the Milky Way?
So
the globular clusters (which contain very old stars) reveal a spherical component of the Milky Way
, while the open clusters and other young stars and star-forming regions reveal a disk-shaped component of the Milky Way.
Why are globular clusters found in the halo?
What will be the long term future of our galaxy?
What will be the long-term future of our Galaxy? On its own,
the Milky Way will not become unstable
. It will continue to grow by cannibalising small galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds (currently, the Milky Way is swallowing a small dwarf galaxy).
How do we know interstellar matter exists?
the matter creates narrow absorption lines in the spectra of some stars
. we can see it in dark clouds and clouds that absorb light. we can detect radio waves coming from atoms and molecules in the cold gas. some stars appear red in color despite their temperature.
Is the Sun metal-rich?
0.012
What star cluster are we in?
No the sun is not part of a cluster. There are several types of clusters that we see in the sky. The most familiar is the “
open cluster
“, like the Pleiades. These are a group of stars that formed together and have remained close.
