Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Peng (Peking University, Beijing)

IC 3506 is a dwarf galaxy near the central hub of the Virgo cluster of galaxies, the nearest large galaxy cluster to Earth. Imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during a survey of Virgo cluster galaxies, it was found contains 31 globular clusters. Globular clusters, dense bunches of hundreds of thousands of stars, have some of the oldest surviving stars in the universe. Most of the star clusters in the Virgo survey are older than 5 billion years. Hubble's "eye" is so sharp that it was able to pick out the fuzzy globular clusters, which, at that distance, look like individual stars bunched up around the galaxies, instead of groupings of stars. Comprised of over 2,000 galaxies, the Virgo cluster is located about 54 million light-years away.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2008/news-2008-30

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://hubblesite.org/copyright/