SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
KuriousGeorge
Location of Photo:
Julian, CA
Date/Time of photo:
August 10-12. 2023
Equipment:
Planewave CDK24
Description:
NGC 7006 is a compact and distant globular star cluster that lies in one of the smallest constellations in the night sky, Delphinus (The Dolphin). NGC 7006 resides in the outskirts of the Milky Way. It is about 135,000 light-years away, five times the distance between the Sun and the centre of the galaxy, and it is part of the galactic halo. This roughly spherical region of the Milky Way is made up of dark matter, gas and sparsely distributed stellar clusters. Like other remote globular clusters, NGC 7006 provides important clues that help astronomers to understand how stars formed and assembled in the halo. The cluster has a very eccentric orbit indicating that it may have formed independently, in a small galaxy outside our own that was then captured by the Milky Way. Although NGC 7006 is very distant for a Milky Way globular cluster, it is much closer than the many faint galaxies that can be seen in the background of this image. Each of these faint smudges, well over 100 million light-years away, is probably accompanied by many globular clusters similar to NGC 7006 that are too faint to be seen. https://esahubble.org/images/potw1137a/
