Copyright:Carlos Taylor
中文翻譯:
在南方的天空中，有一個非常特別的星團叫做47 Tucanae，又名NGC 104。這並不是一顆星星，而是一個由數以萬計的星星組成的緊密星團。47 Tucanae和大約200個其他的球狀星團一起，環繞著我們的銀河系，就像一顆美麗的寶石，距離地球有約13,000光年。你可以在天空中用肉眼觀察到它，靠近小麥哲倫雲，就在剛雀座的星空中。這個密集的星團裡有幾十萬顆星星，卻只佔據了約120光年寬的空間。最外圍的紅巨星就像黃色的星星一樣，容易被發現，彷彿在望遠鏡下的清晰畫面。47 Tucanae還是一顆與黑洞有著最近已知軌道的星星的家園。這是一個令人驚奇而又神秘的地方，讓我們想像著宇宙的奧秘！
原文:
Also known as NGC 104, 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. Not a star but a dense cluster of stars, it roams the halo of our Milky Way Galaxy along with some 200 other globular star clusters. The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri) as seen from planet Earth, 47 Tuc lies about 13,000 light-years away. It can be spotted with the naked eye close on the sky to the Small Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of the Toucan. The dense cluster is made up of hundreds of thousands of stars in a volume only about 120 light-years across. Red giant stars on the outskirts of the cluster are easy to pick out as yellowish stars in this sharp telescopic portrait. Tightly packed globular star cluster 47 Tuc is also home to a star with the closest known orbit around a black hole.
來源:NASA每日圖片
