Globular clusters usually consist of hundreds of thousands or millions of ancient stars moving in a group along
Astronomers are perplexed by this discovery. Until now, it was believed that large globular clusters must contain a huge amount of metals. The new find casts doubt on the minimum metallicity limit for globular clusters. In addition, this discovery may have implications for theories about the formation of galaxies in the young universe.
The original globular cluster RBC EXT8 is notwas part of the observation program at the HIRES spectrometer of the Keck telescope in Hawaii. However, the researchers had several hours of time left, and they decided to point the telescope at the discovered cluster. They conducted two spectroscopic observations of 20 minutes each to determine the metal content and used three archived images from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope to determine its size.
Soren Larsen (Radbaud University, Nijmegen,Netherlands) led the study. He kept in touch via Skype with fellow researchers Jean Brody (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and the University of California, USA), Aaron Romanovski (San Jose State University, USA and University of California) and Asher Wasserman (University of California). Wasserman flew a telescope in Hawaii from California.
In the future, researchers hope to find more globular clusters with low metal contents and unravel the mystery of their origin.
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