Hubble telescope snaps glittery gathering of stars: Check out this mesmerizing picture

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday shared a mesmerizing picture of a glittering gathering of stars, about 23,000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Captured by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) onboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the gathering is the globular cluster NGC 6558, which is closer to the centre of the Milky Way galaxy than our planet is.

This Hubble image is thronged with stars in a rich variety of hues. According to the agency, globular clusters like NGC 6558 are tightly bound collections of tens of thousands to millions of stars, and they can be found in a wide range of galaxies.

The image comes from a set of observations investigating globular clusters in the inner Milky Way. Astronomers study these globular clusters to gain greater insight into how globular clusters in the inner Milky Way form and evolve.

Sharing the image, ESA wrote in a post, "Globular clusters equip astronomers with interesting natural laboratories in which to test their theories, as all the stars in a globular cluster formed at approximately the same time with similar initial composition. These stellar clusters, therefore, provide unique insights into how different stars evolve under similar conditions."

Our latest Picture of the Week glitters with a gathering of stars. It's the globular cluster NGC 6558, captured by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. NGC 6558 lies about 23 000 light years away.🔗 https://t.co/lMpj9pZ5MD Credit: @esa / @HUBBLE_space / @NASA , R. Cohen pic.twitter.com/otMH3ZHOC5

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) May 16, 2022

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched and deployed by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. The Advanced Camera for Surveys was installed on the telescope during Servicing Mission 3B in 2002 and it has detectors that are sensitive to visible and ultraviolet light. With its superb image quality and high sensitivity, ACS has increased the telescope's potential for new discoveries by a factor of ten.