{"id":33738,"date":"2026-06-26T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=33738"},"modified":"2026-06-26T07:19:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T12:19:51","slug":"nasas-webb-and-hubble-teamed-up-on-terzan-5-and-the-detail-that-matters-is-that-they-proved-it-isnt-a-globular-star-cluster-at-all-but-a-surviving-relic-from-the-milky-ways-earliest-formation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/nasas-webb-and-hubble-teamed-up-on-terzan-5-and-the-detail-that-matters-is-that-they-proved-it-isnt-a-globular-star-cluster-at-all-but-a-surviving-relic-from-the-milky-ways-earliest-formation\/33738\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s Webb and Hubble teamed up on Terzan 5, and the detail that matters is that they proved it isn’t a globular star cluster at all but a surviving relic from the Milky Way’s earliest formation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Terzan 5 has spent decades wearing the wrong label. Long treated as a globular star cluster<\/a>, this crowded stellar system near the heart of the Milky Way now appears to be something far rarer, a surviving fossil from the era when our galaxy was still coming together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New observations from NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope<\/a>, combined with years of Hubble data, show that Terzan 5 contains up to four separate generations of stars. That finding changes the story. Instead of being a simple cluster of old stars, Terzan 5 looks more like a preserved chunk of the Milky Way\u2019s ancient building material, still carrying the chemical fingerprints of its own long history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A relic near the Milky Way\u2019s heart<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Terzan 5 orbits inside the Milky Way\u2019s bulge, the dense central region packed with older stars, thick dust, and a lot of visual confusion for astronomers. Studying anything there is a bit like trying to spot a candle through smoke in a packed stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, Terzan 5 looked enough like a globular cluster to be classified that way. But a typical globular cluster usually contains one ancient stellar population, while Terzan 5 now appears to have several. That is the big clue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NASA says Webb and Hubble have now shown that Terzan 5 is a self-contained, self-enriching stellar system. In practical terms, it kept enough gas, dust, and heavy elements to make new stars again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Map
Terzan 5 and Liller 1 are highlighted within the Milky Way\u2019s bulge as rare surviving fossil fragments from the galaxy\u2019s earliest assembly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Four generations of stars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The story begins more than half a century ago. Terzan 5 was discovered in 1968 by astronomer Agop Terzan, and later studies began to show that this was no ordinary cluster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2009, scientists found two distinct populations of stars in the system. In 2016, Hubble <\/a>helped estimate their ages, suggesting one group formed roughly 12 billion years ago and another about 5 billion years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: NASA\u2019s X-ray eye caught a jet shooting from the first black hole we ever photographed\u2014apparently fame hasn\u2019t tamed the beast<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Now the timeline is sharper. By combining Webb and Hubble data, researchers found evidence for two additional stellar populations, one about 3.8 billion years old and another just 2.5 billion years old. The two older populations were measured more precisely as 12.5 billion and 4.7 billion years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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