תמונה חדשה מטלסקופ האבל חושפת סודות על צביר הכוכבים

Ultraviolet follow-up (Piotto) — A second team, led by Giampaolo Piotto, conducted a follow-up study using ultraviolet light . This analysis revealed that the cluster, which is over 10 billion years old, experienced two closely spaced periods of star formation that occurred within 634 million years of each other . Such "multiple stellar populations" with small age gaps help explain how globular clusters built up their stars in rapid succession rather than in a single burst .

Composite image details — The final image uses data from five filters across Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys . It shows bright blue stars packed toward the dense core and older, orange-tinted stars populating the outer regions .

Significance for globular cluster formation — These observations help astronomers understand that many globular clusters formed in distinct, closely spaced episodes rather than all at once . The ability to resolve age differences of only a few hundred million years within a 10-billion-year-old cluster provides direct evidence for the "multiple population" paradigm of globular cluster formation .