Hubble uncovers multi-age stars in the Milky Way’s chandelier cluster

A new Hubble image of NGC 6723 (the Chandelier Cluster) shows tens of thousands to millions of stars with blue, younger stars concentrated toward the center and orange, older stars toward the edges, indicating multiple stellar populations and a more complex formation history than once thought. Two star-formation epochs are implied, the second about 634 million years after the first, suggesting globular clusters may form from early gas clouds or be remnants of ancient dwarf galaxies. Globular clusters are common around large galaxies—Milky Way ~150, Andromeda ~460, M87 ~15,000.