The beauty of globular star clusters

On 7 September 2020, NASA released this sparkling addition to the expanding album of Hubble Space Telescope pictures. This beautiful array of colourful stars make up the globular star cluster NGC 1805, which is located near the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way that’s visible in the Southern Hemisphere sky.

The two main colours in this image correspond to different wavelengths of light. The blue stars were imaged in near-ultraviolet light, whereas the red stars were captured in near-infrared. Together they show a group of densely packed stars that create a very aesthetically pleasing portrait.