A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope showed a “sea” of stars near the center of the Milky Way, which is an ancient globular star cluster.
According to scientists, the stars in this image are about 12 billion years old – making them among the oldest stars in the universe.
The stars in Pismis 26 have a nearly spherical structure. The cluster appears to contain mostly red stars, with a few bright blue stars along the edges. These colors are partly due to the cluster’s estimated age of 12 billion years, which means it contains many of the oldest stars in our galaxy, if not the universe.
In addition, part of the cluster’s coloration comes from a phenomenon known as blushing, which is the result of dense stardust blocking short-wavelength blue light while letting longer-wavelength red light through more easily.
Pismis 26 is located near the galactic bulge that surrounds Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. This part of the galaxy is particularly heavy in dust, thanks to the presence of the black hole and its incredible gravity, as well as all the material around it in the bulge and the dense field of stars it contains.
