Hubble image archive
Hubble Pinpoints White Dwarfs in Globular Cluster
Peering deep inside a cluster of several hundred thousand stars, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the oldest burned-out stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Located in the globular cluster M4, these small, dying stars - called white dwarfs - are giving astronomers a fresh readin...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2002
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2002-10-1172-image
Peering deep inside a cluster of several hundred thousand stars, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the oldest burned-out stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Located in the globular cluster M4, these small, dying stars - called white dwarfs - are giving astronomers a fresh reading on one of the biggest questions in astronomy: How old is the universe? The ancient white dwarfs in M4 are about 12 to 13 billion years old. After accounting for the time it took the cluster to form after the big bang, astronomers found that the age of the white dwarfs agrees with previous estimates for the universe's age.
In the top panel, a ground-based observatory snapped a panoramic view of the entire cluster, which contains several hundred thousand stars within a volume of 10 to 30 light-years across. The Kitt Peak National Observatory's 0.9-meter telescope took this picture in March 1995. The box at left indicates the region observed by the Hubble telescope.
The Hubble telescope studied a small region of the cluster. A section of that region is seen in the picture at bottom left.
A sampling of an even smaller region is shown at bottom right. This region is only about one light-year across. In this smaller region, Hubble pinpointed a number of faint white dwarfs. The blue circles pinpoint the dwarfs. It took nearly eight days of exposure time over a 67-day period to find these extremely faint stars.
Globular clusters are among the oldest clusters of stars in the universe. The faintest and coolest white dwarfs within globular clusters can yield a globular cluster's age. Earlier Hubble observations showed that the first stars formed less than 1 billion years after the universe's birth in the big bang. So, finding the oldest stars puts astronomers within arm's reach of the universe's age.
M4 is 5,600 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.
Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 made the observations from January through April 2001. These optical observations were combined to create the above images. Spectral data were also taken.
Credits
Hubble images: NASA and H. Richer (University of British Columbia);Ground-based image: NOAO/AURA/NSF
Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | M4, NGC 6121 |
| Object Description | Globular Cluster |
| R.A. Position | 16h 23m 35.41s |
| Dec. Position | -26° 31' 31.9" |
| Constellation | Scorpius |
| Distance | M4 is roughly 5,600 light-years from the Earth. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | WFPC2 data Principal Astronomers: H. Richer (UBC), D. Vandenberg (U.Victoria), P. Stetson (DAO), M. Bolte (UCSC/Lick Obs.), C. Pryor (Rutgers U.), R. Mcclure (DAO), J. Hesser (DAO), G. Fahlman (CFHT), H. Bond (STScI), R. Bell (U. Maryland) STIS data Principal Astronomers: H. Richer (U. British Columbia), G. Fahlman (CFHT), B. Gibson (U. Colorado), B. Hansen (Princeton U.), R. Ibata (ESO), M. Limongi (Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma), M. Rich (UCLA), M. Shara (AMNH), P. Stetson (DAO) |
| Instrument | WIYN/KPNO>0.9m (top), HST>WFPC2 (bottom-left), and WFPC2 and HST>STIS/MULTIACCUM (bottom-right) |
| Exposure Dates | March 1995 (KPNO), February - March 1995 (WFPC2), and January - April 2001 (STIS) |
| Filters | F336W (B), F555W (V), F814W (I) |
Downloads
Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
View on NASA.gov