NASA and ESA have released a new image of Messier 72 (M72), a globular star cluster, as part of Hubble's 35th-anniversary celebration. M72 was the first image showcased as Hubble's 'Picture of the Week' starting April 22, 2010.
Located in the Aquarius constellation, M72 is 50,000 light-years from Earth. Globular clusters like M72 are stable, spherical collections of stars formed around the same time and represent the Milky Way's oldest building blocks.
The image reveals a variety of stars, including massive blue stars nearing the end of their lives and red giants approaching the end of their stellar evolution. Discovered in 1780 by Pierre Mechain, M72's dense core may conceal an intermediate-mass black hole, and the image features Hubble's signature diffraction spikes on bright stars.