Messier 92 is a ball of stars (globular cluster) located about 26,700 light years away from the Earth in the northern constellation of Hercules. Messier 92 is one of the brightest globular clusters in the Milky Way,and is visible to the naked eye under good observing conditions. It is very tightly packed with around 250,000 stars and is over 14 billion years old. Charles Messier,the 18th century French astronomer,catalogued over 100 galaxies and clusters. Through the telescopes available at the time,comets,nebulae,globular clusters and galaxies appeared just as faint,diffuse blobs. This picture was obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. |