Infinite Terzan 4 by Dirk Verwoerd

'As long as I cannot grasp the concept of infinity, I will cheerfully continue to believe in that other worlds can open up for us after death.'

This picture always makes me quiet. Countless stars and then we only see a fraction of the universe.

Long live Science!

The individual stars in this dense mass's are almost indistinguishable from each other with telescopes on Earth, but can be picked apart with space telescopes. Astronomers have used Hubble's crystal clear vision to study the stars that form globular clusters, and how these systems change over time. This particular observation comes from astronomers who used Hubble to study Terzan 4 and other globular clusters to understand the shape, density, age and structure of globular clusters close to the centre of the Milky Way. Unlike globular clusters elsewhere in the sky, these globular clusters have eluded detailed observation because of the gas and dust clouds swirling around the galactic core. These clouds block starlight in a process astronomers call 'extinction' and complicate astronomical observations. Astronomers used the sensitivity of two of Hubble's instruments - the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 - to overcome the impact of extinction on Terzan 4. By combining Hubble images with advanced data processing, astronomers were able to determine the ages of galactic globular clusters to the nearest billion years - a relatively accurate measurement in astronomical terms!