Copyright:
Roberto Colombari
原文:
This huge ball of stars predates our Sun. Long before humankind evolved, before dinosaurs roamed, and even before our Earth existed, ancient globs of stars condensed and orbited a young Milky Way Galaxy. Of the 200 or so globular clusters that survive today, Omega Centauri is the largest, containing over ten million stars. Omega Centauri is also the brightest globular cluster, at apparent visual magnitude 3.9 it is visible to southern observers with the unaided eye. Cataloged as NGC 5139, Omega Centauri is about 18,000 light-years away and 150 light-years in diameter. Unlike many other globular clusters, the stars in Omega Centauri show several different ages and trace chemical abundances, indicating that the globular star cluster has a complex history over its 12 billion year age.
中文翻譯:
這個巨大的恆星球團比我們的太陽還要古老。在人類進化之前，恐龍遍佈地球之前，甚至在我們的地球還未形成之前，古老的恆星團就已經凝聚並圍繞著年輕的銀河系運行。今天倖存下來的約200個球狀星團中，Ω Centauri（Omega Centauri）是最大的，擁有超過一千萬顆恆星。Ω Centauri 也是最亮的球狀星團，視覺星等為3.9，南半球的觀察者用肉眼就可以看到。它被編目為NGC 5139，距離地球約18,000光年，直徑約150光年。與許多其他球狀星團不同的是，Ω Centauri 中的恆星顯示出多種不同的年齡及化學成分，這表明這個球狀星團在其約120億年的歷史中擁有一個複雜的演變過程。
#OmegaCentauri #NGC5139 #銀河系 #球狀星團 #天文學 #恆星 #宇宙奇觀 #天文探索 #星空觀察 #科學知識
來源:NASA每日圖片
