star cluster Globular clustersastronomy

About 150 globular clusters were known in the Milky Way Galaxy by the early years of the 21st century. Most are widely scattered in galactic latitude, but about a third of them are concentrated around the galactic centre, as satellite systems in the rich Sagittarius-Scorpius star fields. Individual cluster masses include up to one million suns, and their linear diameters can be several hundred light-years; their apparent diameters range from one degree for Omega Centauri down to knots of one minute of arc. In a cluster such as M3, 90 percent of the light is contained within a diameter of 100 light-years, but star counts and the study of RR Lyrae member stars (whose intrinsic brightness varies regularly within well-known limits) include a larger one of 325 light-years. The clusters differ markedly in the degree to which stars are concentrated at their centres. Most of them appear circular and are probably spherical, but a few (e.g., Omega Centauri) are noticeably elliptical. The most elliptical cluster is M19, its major axis being about double its minor axis.

Globular clusters are composed of Population II objects (i.e., old stars). The brightest stars are the red giants, bright red stars with an absolute magnitude of −2, about 600 times the Sun’s brightness or luminosity. In relatively few globular clusters have stars as intrinsically faint as the Sun been measured, and in no such clusters have the faintest stars yet been recorded. The luminosity function for M3 shows that 90 percent of the visual light comes from stars at least twice as bright as the Sun, but more than 90 percent of the cluster mass is made up of fainter stars. The density near the centres of globular clusters is roughly two stars per cubic light-year, compared with one star per 300 cubic light-years in the solar neighbourhood. Studies of globular clusters have shown a difference in spectral properties from stars in the solar neighbourhood—a difference that proved to be due to a deficiency of metals in the clusters, which have been classified on the basis of increasing metal abundance. Globular cluster stars are between 2 and 300 times poorer in metals than stars like the Sun, with the metal abundance being higher for clusters near the galactic centre than for those in the halo (the outermost reaches of the Galaxy extending far above and below its plane). The amounts of other elements, such as helium, may also differ from cluster to cluster. The hydrogen in cluster stars is thought to amount to 70–75 percent by mass, helium 25–30 percent, and the heavier elements 0.01–0.1 percent. Radio astronomical studies have set a low upper limit on the amount of neutral hydrogen in globular clusters. Dark lanes of nebulous matter are puzzling features in some of these clusters. Though it is difficult to explain the presence of distinct, separate masses of unformed matter in old systems, the nebulosity cannot be foreground material between the cluster and the observer.

About 2,000 variable stars are known in the 100 or more globular clusters that have been examined. Of these, perhaps 90 percent are members of the class called RR Lyrae variables. Other variables that occur in globular clusters are Population II Cepheids, RV Tauri, and U Geminorum stars, as well as Mira stars, eclipsing binaries, and novas.

The colour of a star, as previously noted, has been found generally to correspond to its surface temperature, and in a somewhat similar way the type of spectrum shown by a star depends on the degree of excitation of the light-radiating atoms in it and therefore also on the temperature. All stars in a given globular cluster are, within a very small percentage of the total distance, at equal distances from the Earth so that the effect of distance on brightness is common to all. Colour-magnitude and spectrum-magnitude diagrams can thus be plotted for the stars of a cluster, and the position of the stars in the array, except for a factor that is the same for all stars, will be independent of distance.

In globular clusters all such arrays show a major grouping of stars along the lower main sequence, with a giant branch containing more-luminous stars curving from there upward to the red and with a horizontal branch starting about halfway up the giant branch and extending toward the blue.

This basic picture was explained as owing to differences in the courses of evolutionary change that stars with similar compositions but different masses would follow after long intervals of time. The absolute magnitude at which the brighter main-sequence stars leave the main sequence (the turnoff point, or “knee”) is a measure of the age of the cluster, assuming that most of the stars formed at the same time. Globular clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy prove to be nearly as old as the universe, averaging perhaps 14 billion years in age and ranging between approximately 12 billion and 16 billion years, although these figures continue to be revised. RR Lyrae variables, when present, lie in a special region of the colour-magnitude diagram called the RR Lyrae gap, near the blue end of the horizontal branch in the diagram.

Two features of globular cluster colour-magnitude diagrams remain enigmatic. The first is the so-called “blue straggler” problem. Blue stragglers are stars located near the lower main sequence, although their temperature and mass indicate that they already should have evolved off the main sequence, like the great majority of other such stars in the cluster. A possible explanation is that a blue straggler is the coalescence of two lower mass stars in a “born-again” scenario that turned them into a single, more-massive, and seemingly younger star farther up the main sequence, although this does not fit all cases.

The other enigma is referred to as the “second parameter” problem. Apart from the obvious effect of age, the shape and extent of the various sequences in a globular cluster’s colour-magnitude diagram are governed by the abundance of metals in the chemical makeup of the cluster’s members. This is the “first parameter.” Nevertheless, there are cases in which two clusters, seemingly almost identical in age and metal abundance, show horizontal branches that are quite different—one may be short and stubby, and the other may extend far toward the blue. There is thus evidently another, as-yet-unidentified parameter involved. Stellar rotation has been mooted as a possible second parameter, but that now seems unlikely.

Integrated magnitudes (measurements of the total brightness of the cluster), cluster diameters, and the mean magnitude of the 25 brightest stars made possible the first distance determinations on the basis of the assumption that the apparent differences were due entirely to distance. The colour-magnitude diagram, or the apparent magnitudes of the RR Lyrae variables, however, leads to the best distance estimates. The correction factor for interstellar reddening, which is caused by the presence of intervening matter that absorbs and reddens stellar light, is substantial for many globular clusters but small for those in high galactic latitudes, away from the plane of the Milky Way. Distances range from about 8,000 light-years for NGC 6397 to an intergalactic distance of 390,000 light-years for the cluster called AM-1.

The radial velocities (the speed at which objects approach or recede from an observer, taken as positive when the distance is increasing) measured by the Doppler effect have been determined from integrated spectra for some 138 globular clusters. The largest negative velocity is 384 km/s (kilometres per second) for NGC 7006, while the largest positive velocity is 494 km/s for NGC 3201. These velocities suggest that the globular clusters are moving around the galactic centre in highly elliptical orbits. The globular cluster system as a whole has a rotational velocity of about 180 km/s relative to the Sun, or 30 km/s on an absolute basis. For one cluster, Omega Centauri, motions of the individual stars around the massive centre have actually been observed and measured. Though proper motions of the clusters are very small, those for individual stars provide a useful criterion for cluster membership.

The two globular clusters of highest absolute luminosity are in the Southern Hemisphere in the constellations Centaurus and Tucana. Omega Centauri, with an (integrated) absolute visual magnitude of −10.2, is the richest cluster in variables, with nearly 300 known in the early 21st century. From this large group, three types of RR Lyrae stars were first distinguished in 1902. Omega Centauri is relatively nearby, at a distance of 16,000 light-years, and it lacks a sharp nucleus. The cluster designated 47 Tucanae (NGC 104), with an absolute visual magnitude of −9.3 at a similar distance of 13,500 light-years, has a different appearance with strong central concentration. It is located near the Small Magellanic Cloud but is not connected with it. For an observer situated at the centre of this great cluster, the sky would have the brightness of twilight on the Earth because of the light of the thousands of stars nearby. In the Northern Hemisphere, M13 in the constellation Hercules is the easiest to see and is the best known. At a distance of 22,000 light-years, it has been thoroughly investigated and is relatively poor in variables. M3 in Canes Venatici, 32,000 light-years away, is the cluster second richest in variables, with well more than 200 known. Investigation of these variables resulted in the placement of the RR Lyrae stars in a special region of the colour-magnitude diagram.