Globular clusters are thought to harbor some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, born when the universe was just a small fraction of its current age. As well as being far older than the Sun — around twice its age — the stars of Messier 9 also have a markedly different composition, and are enriched with far fewer heavier elements than the Sun.
In particular, the elements crucial to life on Earth, like oxygen and carbon and the iron that makes up our planet’s core, are very scarce in Messier 9 and clusters like it. This is because the universe’s heavier elements were gradually formed in the cores of stars and in supernova explosions. When the stars of Messier 9 formed, there were far smaller quantities of these elements in existence.
The great French astronomer Charles Messier discovered Messier 9 in 1764. Even through the most advanced telescopes of the day, none of the stars in the cluster was visible individually. Messier, seeing only a faint smudge, classified the object as a nebula — or “cloud” in Latin. It was only later in the 18th century that astronomers, most notably William Herschel, began to spot stars within the cluster.
The contrast between Messier’s equipment and the tools at the disposal of today’s astronomers is stark. Hubble’s image, the highest-resolution image made of Messier 9, is able to resolve individual stars right into the crowded center of the cluster. Over 250,000 stars are neatly focused on the detector of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in an image that covers an area no bigger than the size of the head of a pin held at arm’s length.
As well as showing the individual stars, Hubble’s image clearly shows the different colors of the stars. A star’s color is directly related to its temperature — counterintuitively, perhaps: the redder it is, the cooler it is; and the bluer it is, the hotter. The wide range of stellar temperatures here is clearly displayed by the broad palette of colors visible in Hubble’s image of Messier 9.
Messier 9’s neighborhood is interesting, too, and is marked by two vast dark nebulae. These pitch-black clouds of interstellar dust are known as Barnard 259 (to the southeast of Messier 9) and Barnard 64 (to the west), and are clearly visible in wide-field images of the cluster.
