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Thursday, December 1, 2011

An Ancient 'Metropolis' Orbiting the Milky Way --One of the Oldest Objects in the Universe

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One of 150 globular clusters that orbit the Milky Way, M107, also known as NGC 6171, a compact and ancient family of stars that lies about 21 000 light-years away, is a bustling metropolis: thousands of stars in globular clusters like this one are concentrated into a space that is only about twenty times the distance between our Sun and its nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Centauri. A significant number of these stars have already evolved into red giants, one of the last stages of a star’s life.

Read More: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/12/an-ancient-metropolis-orbiting-the-milky-way.html

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