Inbox Astronomy: STScI Scientists Surprised to Find Brightness ‘Gap’ in Ancient Star Cluster

INBOX ASTRONOMY

STScI Scientists Surprised to Find Brightness ‘Gap’ in Ancient Star Cluster

Release date: Wednesday, June 3, 2026 10:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Tools developed at STScI for the Hubble Space Telescope were critical to this discovery.

In a serendipitous discovery, STScI scientists using the Euclid space telescope have for the first time found a red-dwarf brightness “gap” feature in the population of a globular cluster—an ancient, crowded collection of stars. A similar gap was first identified in data from the Gaia observatory of nearby stellar populations. However, it has never before been detected in a globular cluster. The gap provides clues to processes happening deep within the stars’ interiors.

This finding would not have been possible without the software and techniques originally developed at STScI for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope over more than two decades. These tools allowed the team to push the limits of Euclid, and in the future, the Roman Space Telescope.

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Find additional resources at www.stsci.edu

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