Too Close For Comfort

INBOX ASTRONOMY: NEWS ALERT

FOR RELEASE: August 7, 2003

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC03-21

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

This Hubble Space Telescope view of the core of one of the nearest
globular star clusters, called NGC 6397, resembles a treasure chest
of glittering jewels. The cluster is located 8,200 light-years away
in the constellation Ara. Here, the stars are jam-packed together.
The stellar density is about a million times greater than in our
Sun's stellar neighborhood. The stars in NGC 6397 are also in
constant motion, like a swarm of angry bees. The ancient stars are
so crowded together that a few of them inevitably collide with each
other once in a while. Near misses are even more common.

This Hubble image is a mosaic of two sets of images taken several
years apart by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Archival data from
science teams led by Jonathan Grindlay (Harvard University) and
Ivan King (University of California, Berkeley), taken in 1997 and
1999, were combined with Hubble Heritage data taken in 2001.
Adrienne Cool (San Francisco State University), who was also on
both archival science teams, worked with the Hubble Heritage team
to acquire the new observations.

Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: A. Cool (SFSU)

To see and read more about globular star cluster NGC 6397, please
click on:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2003/21
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2003/21

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the
Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA),
for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of
international cooperation between NASA and the European Space
Agency (ESA).