NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 15 June 2023: M15 Globular Star Cluster snapped by Hubble

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Over the past few months, we've seen several amazing images of celestial objects as part of NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day, which is published on a daily basis featuring astrophotographers from around the world. Some of these include snapshots of fascinating celestial objects documented by Charles Messier. The French astronomer studied and catalogued these objects in Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d'Étoiles and the catalogue is today known as the Messier Objects which contains 110 objects.

Today's NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day is a breathtaking snapshot of M15, a globular star cluster that is located about 33600 light-years away towards the constellation of Pegasus. According to NASA, Messier 15 is one of the densest ever discovered, with hot blue stars and cooler orange stars becoming more concentrated toward its bright core. It was discovered by Italian astronomer Jean-Dominique Maraldi in 1746 and included in Charles Messier's catalogue in 1764.

Messier 15 contains over 100,000 stars and is estimated to be over 12.5 billion years old, making it one of the oldest known globular star clusters.

This awesome picture was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, which is run by NASA in collaboration with ESA. Hubble has advanced optical instruments such as the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3. The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) was primarily designed to survey large areas of the sky at visible and red wavelengths with 10 times greater efficiency than the earlier premier Hubble camera.

Messier 15 is an immense swarm of over 100,000 stars. A 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy it's one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way.