74 ASTRONOMY • JUNE 2019
An ancient
city of stars
This tightly packed ball
of colorful suns sparkles
deep in Earth’s southern
sky. Globular cluster
NGC 1466 lies 160,000
light-years away in the
Milky Way’s largest
satellite galaxy, the
Large Magellanic Cloud
(LMC). The heavyweight
cluster spans about
150 light-years and holds
roughly 140,000 times the
mass of the Sun. NGC 1466
formed some 13.1 billion
years ago, just as the
cosmic Dark Ages that
ruled the early universe
were giving way to light.
The cluster resides in the
constellation Hydrus,
well away from the LMC’s
central hub on the border
between Dorado and
Mensa. NASA/ESA/HUBBLEBREAK
THROUGH