Photo: NASA
I know, we have no palpable evidence that sentient life exists beyond the borders of our world, but the circumstantial clues are simply overwhelming. I mean, just look at the photo we have here: can one really argue that we are the only intelligent species to have evolved in a universe populated by billions upon billions of stars not unlike our own, many of them surrounded by planets not unlike our own?
And keep in mind what you’re looking at is not the entire Universe, but just a small fraction of it. In fact, it’s only a tiny piece of our very own Milky Way galaxy, the galactic globular cluster NGC 6355.
These clusters are large gatherings of stars that can be found in pretty much all galaxies. Depending on a variety of factors, they can have between a few tens of thousands and perhaps billions of stars, all bundled close together, if you look from far enough, in a relatively spherical shape given by their combined gravities.
And NGC 6355 is far enough. Located in the Milky Way’s inner regions, the cluster rotates in the blackness of space at a distance of about 50,000 light-years from Earth, in the Ophiuchus constellation.
Despite being so densely packed with stars, NGC 6355 is not easily visible from here on Earth, although British astronomer William Herschel had no problem discovering it in the late 1700s. Luckily, we now have hardware in place that can give us such a detailed view of the area that’ll definitely make us all feel small and insignificant.
It’s the Hubble Space Telescope we’re talking about. Perhaps not the youngest of its kind out there and certainly less of an attention-grabber than the brand new James Webb, Hubble is still more than capable of taking our breath away. The image of NGC 6355 as seen by Hubble that NASA released this week is ample proof of that. Blue, red, orange, and white stars, all sprinkling and inherently beautiful, seem to have stopped their celestial motion for the telescope to snap them on film.
Generally, it’s impossible for human hardware to capture stars individually in clusters such as this, but Hubble, thanks to the gear it packs and its location in low-Earth orbit, away from the visual clutter we Earthlings have to deal with every day, can do that easily.
The image is so crisp it’s like an open invitation to anyone with enough patience and skill to count all those stars, just for the kicks of it. And, through the sheer number of stars shown, it’s also like a slap on the face of those denying the possibility of intelligent alien life looking back at us from around one of those little dots of light.
These clusters are large gatherings of stars that can be found in pretty much all galaxies. Depending on a variety of factors, they can have between a few tens of thousands and perhaps billions of stars, all bundled close together, if you look from far enough, in a relatively spherical shape given by their combined gravities.
And NGC 6355 is far enough. Located in the Milky Way’s inner regions, the cluster rotates in the blackness of space at a distance of about 50,000 light-years from Earth, in the Ophiuchus constellation.
Despite being so densely packed with stars, NGC 6355 is not easily visible from here on Earth, although British astronomer William Herschel had no problem discovering it in the late 1700s. Luckily, we now have hardware in place that can give us such a detailed view of the area that’ll definitely make us all feel small and insignificant.
It’s the Hubble Space Telescope we’re talking about. Perhaps not the youngest of its kind out there and certainly less of an attention-grabber than the brand new James Webb, Hubble is still more than capable of taking our breath away. The image of NGC 6355 as seen by Hubble that NASA released this week is ample proof of that. Blue, red, orange, and white stars, all sprinkling and inherently beautiful, seem to have stopped their celestial motion for the telescope to snap them on film.
Generally, it’s impossible for human hardware to capture stars individually in clusters such as this, but Hubble, thanks to the gear it packs and its location in low-Earth orbit, away from the visual clutter we Earthlings have to deal with every day, can do that easily.
The image is so crisp it’s like an open invitation to anyone with enough patience and skill to count all those stars, just for the kicks of it. And, through the sheer number of stars shown, it’s also like a slap on the face of those denying the possibility of intelligent alien life looking back at us from around one of those little dots of light.
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