Title: Star Clusters in Hurcules
Author: WordPress.org
Published: 6. Juli 2021
Last modified: 27. Mai 2022

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Smaller than either star-clouds or star-swarms, and differing from both in their
organization, are star-clusters. These, unlike the others, are found outside as 
well as inside the Milky Way, although they are more numerous inside its boundaries
than elsewhere.

The term star-cluster is sometimes applied, though improperly, to assemblages which
are rather groups, such, for instance, as the Pleiades. In their most characteristic
aspect star-clusters are of a globular shape — globes of suns! A famous example 
of a globular star-cluster, but one not included in the Milky Way, is the «Great
Cluster in Hercules.»

This is barely visible to the naked eye, but a small telescope shows its character,
and in a large one it presents a marvelous spectacle. Photographs of such clusters
are, perhaps, less effective than those of star-clouds, because the central condensation
of stars in them is so great that their light becomes blended in an indistinguishable
blur. The beautiful effect of the incessant play of infinitesimal rays over the 
apparently compact surface of the cluster, as if it were a globe of the finest frosted
silver shining in an electric beam, is also lost in a photograph.

Still, even to the eye looking directly at the cluster through a powerful telescope,
the central part of the wonderful congregation seems almost a solid mass in which
the stars are packed like the ice crystals in a snowball.