NGC 2210 in the Large Magellanic Cloud is a noteworthy globular cluster that is approximately 11.6 billion years old and has provided a deeper understanding of the age and formation of ancient clusters of stars. The dense concentration of stars also makes it a dramatic astronomical phenomenon.

NGC 2210 is a globular star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 157,000 light-years away from Earth. It is a fascinating astronomical phenomenon. At approximately 11.6 billion years old, it is slightly younger than the universe and younger than the Large Magellanic Cloud and other star clusters in the Milky Way. Image source: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A.Sarajedini, F.Niederhofer

This striking image shows the dense globular cluster known as NGC 2210 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The Large Magellanic Cloud is about 157,000 light-years away from Earth and is a so-called satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, which means that the two galaxies are gravitational bound. Globular star clusters are very stable, tightly packed clusters of thousands or even millions of stars. Their stability means they can persist for long periods of time, so globular clusters are often used to study potentially very old star populations.

In fact, the 2017 study, which drew on data that was also used to construct this image, found that the LMC globular cluster sample is very close in age to some of the oldest star populations found in the Milky Way's halo. They found that the specific age of NGC2210 may be around 11.6 billion years. Although it's only a few billion years younger than the universe itself, it makes NGC 2210 the youngest globular cluster to date in their sample. In the same study, all other LMC globular clusters were found to be older, with four of them being older than 13 billion years. This is interesting because it tells astronomers that the oldest globular clusters in the LMC formed at the same time as the oldest clusters in the Milky Way, even though the two galaxies formed independently.

Not only is this ancient but relatively young star cluster an interesting object of study, its highly concentrated population of stars is also stunningly beautiful. From the perspective of a planetary inhabitant orbiting a star at the center of a globular cluster, the night sky would look very different: the sky would appear to be jam-packed with stars, and the stellar environment would be thousands of times more crowded than our planet.