Messier 28

I previously published a wide field of Messier 28 (M28) I took with my small refractor. It exposes a great deal of ionized gas in the region, which is located near the galactic center. But I used my big reflector to get closer in on it for this image.

Located about 18,000 light years away, low on my horizon, M28 was the second one discovered, in 1987, to contain a short-period pulsar—a neutron star rotating once every three milliseconds!

Globular clusters are ancient collections of stars that are gravitationally bound together in a spheroidal shape. Some are almost as old as the universe itself. They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands of stars to millions of stars. The stars they house tend to be very old as well, because star formation inside the cluster has largely ceased. The formation of globular clusters is not well understood. Current research leans toward the idea that they formed from very dense molecular clouds in the early universe. Some larger globular clusters may once have been dwarf galaxies whose larger star populations were stripped away from the core by larger galaxies.

M28 Facts

Distance: 18,000 light years

Number of stars: 50,000

Diameter: 60 light years

Age: 12 billion years