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Unsolved Mystery in Messier 4 Cluster

Wednesday, September 5, 2012 21:40

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(Before It's News)

Image from the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope showing the spectacular globular star cluster Messier 4. (ESO)

A new view of the globular star cluster Messier 4 has been released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), showing its full shape and even more of the tens of thousands of ancient stars residing there.

Also known as NGC 6121, the cluster is only 7,200 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius, near the bright red star Antares.

The image was captured with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG) 2.2-meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in the Chilean Andes.

Messier 4 is home to many white dwarfs, which are small dense stars with burned-out cores a bit like our sun.

As the stars in globular clusters are old, they are not normally rich in chemical elements heavier than helium. However, a recent survey showed one of the Messier 4 stars contains an unexpectedly large amount of lithium, which is normally destroyed during the lifetime of a star.

Either the star has kept its original lithium or become enriched with fresh lithium.

Below is a more detailed image of the cluster’s center that was recently taken with the Hubble Space Telescope.