These stars are not gravitationally tied to any one galaxy in a cluster. In giant clusters of hundreds or thousands of galaxies, innumerable stars wander among the galaxies like lost souls, emitting a ghostly haze of light. Understanding the origin of intracluster light could give astronomers new insights into the assembly history of entire galaxy clusters. (The escape velocity from our Milky Way is over 1 million miles per hour). Billions of years ago galaxies would have been smaller than seen today, and they probably shed stars pretty easily because of a weaker gravitational pull. Although the first clues came in 1951, Hubble can easily detect this light even though it's 1/10,000th the glow of the night sky as seen from the ground-based telescopes. The nighttime sky would appear inky black and starless to any inhabitants orbiting their parent sun, save for the feeble soft glow of neighboring galaxies peppering the sky.Ĭollectively, the dim dispersed glow from these wayward stars forms a background called intracluster light that is evidence they are lurking around. But there are many stars wandering about inside giant clusters of hundreds or thousands of galaxies.
We are nestled inside the sprawling Milky Way galaxy, an empire of stars. Thanks to Hubble, astronomers now know about entire families of stars – and presumably their planetary systems – that don't even have a galaxy to call home.
But truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to Hubble Space Telescope discoveries. In the 1960s sci-fi television show "Lost in Space" a small family of would-be planetary colonists get off course and lost in our galaxy. Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's Achievements.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate.
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