The Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of Messier 30 (M30), a globular cluster located approximately 27,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Capricornus. ESA released the image on Nov. 5.
M30 is a densely packed collection of tens of thousands to millions of stars held together by gravity. The Milky Way hosts at least 150 globular clusters, some estimated to be between 11.5 billion and 13.5 billion years old. The universe itself is approximately 13.8 billion years old.
Globular clusters preserve chemical clues about conditions when they formed, helping astronomers understand the Milky Way's early history. M30, along with several other globular clusters, traverses the Milky Way in the opposite direction to the galaxy's rotation. This unusual motion raises the possibility that M30 may not have formed in the Milky Way at all, but was instead captured by the galaxy billions of years ago.