Messier 30: Difference between revisions

M30 is located at a distance of about 27,100 light-years from Earth, and is about 93 light-years across. The estimated age is roughly 12.93 billion years and it has a combined mass of about 160,000 times the mass of the Sun. The cluster is following a retrograde orbit through the inner galactic halo, suggesting that it was acquired from a satellite galaxy rather than forming within the Milky Way. It is currently located at a distance of about 22.2 kly (6.8 kpc) from the center of the galaxy, compared to an estimated 26 kly (8.0 kpc) for the Sun.

The M30 cluster has passed through a dynamic process called core collapse and now has a concentration of mass at its core of about a million times the Sun's mass per cubic parsec. This makes it one of the highest density regions in the Milky Way galaxy. Stars in such close proximity will experience a high rate of interactions that can create binary star systems, as well as a type of star called a blue straggler that is formed by mass transfer. A process of mass segregation may have caused the central region to gain a greater proportion of higher mass stars, creating a color gradient with increasing blueness toward the middle of the cluster.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_30 Messier 30]</ref>