Press Release

The Toucan's Diamond

VLT Image of a Unique Swarm of Stars, 47 Tuc

8 June 2006

The Southern constellation Tucana (the Toucan) is probably best known as the home of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. But Tucana also hosts another famous object that shines thousands of lights, like a magnificent, oversized diamond in the sky: the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. More popularly known as 47 Tuc, it is surpassed in size and brightness by only one other globular cluster, Omega Centauri.

Globular clusters are gigantic families of stars, comprising several tens of thousands of stars, all thought to be born at the same time from the same cloud of gas [1]. As such, they constitute unique laboratories for the study of how stars evolve and interact. This is even more so because they are located at the same distance, so the brightness of different types of stars, at different stages in their evolution can be directly compared.

The stars in globular clusters are held together by their mutual gravity which gives them their spherical shape, hence their name. Globular clusters are thought to be among the oldest objects in our Milky Way galaxy, and contain therefore mostly old, low-mass stars

47 Tucanae is an impressive globular cluster that is visible with the unaided eye from the southern hemisphere. It was discovered in 1751 by the French astronomer Nicholas Louis de Lacaille who cataloged it in his list of southern nebulous objects. Located about 16 000 light years away, it has a total mass of about 1 million times the mass of the Sun and is 120 light years across, making it appear on the sky as big as the full moon.

The colour image of 47 Tucanae presented here was taken with FORS1 on ESO's Very Large Telescope in 2001. The image covers only the densest, very central part of the cluster. The globular cluster extends in reality four times further away! As can be seen however, the density of stars rapidly drops off when moving away from the centre. The red giants, stars that have used up all the hydrogen in their core and have increased in size, are especially easy to pick out.

47 Tuc is so dense that stars are less than a tenth of a light year apart, which is about the size of the Solar System. By comparison, the closest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri, is four light years away. This high density causes many stars to 'bump' into each other, some getting 'married' in the process, or some stars in binary systems exchanging companions. These dynamic processes are the origin of many exotic objects, to be found in the cluster.

Thus, 47 Tuc contains at least twenty millisecond pulsars, i.e. neutron stars [2] rotating extremely rapidly around their axis, a few hundreds to one thousand times a second. Such peculiar objects are generally thought to have a companion from which they receive matter.

The Hubble Space Telescope recently also looked at 47 Tuc to study planets orbiting very close to their parent stars. This experiment showed that such 'hot Jupiters' must be much less common in 47 Tucanae than around stars in the Sun's neighbourhood. This may tell us either that the dense cluster environment is unhealthy for even such close planets, or that planet formation is a different matter today than it was very early in our Galaxy's history.

Notes

[1]: There are possible exceptions however. Omega Centauri for example harbours two different populations of stars, which may suggest they formed at different times (see ESO 07/05).

[2]: Neutron stars are among the most extreme objects in the Universe. They are formed when a massive star dies in a 'supernova explosion'. During this dramatic event, the core of the star suddenly collapses under its own gravity and the outer parts are violently ejected into surrounding space. A neutron star is like one big atom with a diameter of 10-20 kilometres, and has a mass about the same as the Sun. Thus, a pinhead of neutron star material (1 millimetre across) has a mass almost 1 million tons, or about as much as the largest oil carrier ever built, fully loaded.

More information

Technical information: ESO Press Photo eso0620 is based on data obtained with FORS1 on Kueyen, UT2 of the Very Large Telescope. The image, 7 arcmin wide, covers the central core of the 30 arcmin large globular cluster. The observations were taken in three different filters: U, R, and a narrow-band filter centred around 485 nm, for a total exposure time of less than 5 minutes. The data were extracted from the ESO Science Archive and processed by Rubina Kotak (ESO) and the final image processing was done by Henri Boffin (ESO). North is up and East is to the left.

Connect with ESO on social media

About the Release

Release No.:eso0620
Legacy ID:PR 20/06
Name:47 Tucanae, Tucana
Type:Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Globular
Facility:Very Large Telescope
Instruments:FORS1

Images

The globular cluster 47 Tuc
The globular cluster 47 Tuc

Send us your comments!
Subscribe to receive news from ESO in your language
Accelerated by CDN77
Terms & Conditions
Cookie Settings and Policy

Our use of Cookies

We use cookies that are essential for accessing our websites and using our services. We also use cookies to analyse, measure and improve our websites’ performance, to enable content sharing via social media and to display media content hosted on third-party platforms.

You can manage your cookie preferences and find out more by visiting 'Cookie Settings and Policy'.

ESO Cookies Policy


The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in astronomy. It carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities for astronomy.

This Cookies Policy is intended to provide clarity by outlining the cookies used on the ESO public websites, their functions, the options you have for controlling them, and the ways you can contact us for additional details.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device by websites you visit. They serve various purposes, such as remembering login credentials and preferences and enhance your browsing experience.

Categories of cookies we use

Essential cookies (always active): These cookies are strictly necessary for the proper functioning of our website. Without these cookies, the website cannot operate correctly, and certain services, such as logging in or accessing secure areas, may not be available; because they are essential for the website’s operation, they cannot be disabled.

Cookie ID/Name
Description/Purpose
Provider (1st party or 3rd party)
Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?
Duration
csrftoken
XSRF protection token. We use this cookie to protect against cross-site request forgery attacks.
1st party
Stored
1 year
user_privacy
Your privacy choices. We use this cookie to save your privacy preferences.
1st party
Stored
6 months
_grecaptcha
We use reCAPTCHA to protect our forms against spam and abuse. reCAPTCHA sets a necessary cookie when executed for the purpose of providing its risk analysis. We use www.recaptcha.net instead of www.google.com in order to avoid unnecessary cookies from Google.
3rd party
Stored
6 months

Functional Cookies: These cookies enhance your browsing experience by enabling additional features and personalization, such as remembering your preferences and settings. While not strictly necessary for the website to function, they improve usability and convenience; these cookies are only placed if you provide your consent.

Cookie ID/Name
Description/Purpose
Provider (1st party or 3rd party)
Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?
Duration
Settings
preferred_language
Language settings. We use this cookie to remember your preferred language settings.
1st party
Stored
1 year
ON | OFF
sessionid
ESO Shop. We use this cookie to store your session information on the ESO Shop. This is just an identifier which is used on the server in order to allow you to purchase items in our shop.
1st party
Stored
2 weeks
ON | OFF

Analytics cookies: These cookies collect information about how visitors interact with our website, such as which pages are visited most often and how users navigate the site. This data helps us improve website performance, optimize content, and enhance the user experience; these cookies are only placed if you provide your consent. We use the following analytics cookies.

Matomo Cookies:

This website uses Matomo (formerly Piwik), an open source software which enables the statistical analysis of website visits. Matomo uses cookies (text files) which are saved on your computer and which allow us to analyze how you use our website. The website user information generated by the cookies will only be saved on the servers of our IT Department. We use this information to analyze www.eso.org visits and to prepare reports on website activities. These data will not be disclosed to third parties.

On behalf of ESO, Matomo will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.

ON | OFF

Matomo cookies settings:

Cookie ID/Name
Description/Purpose
Provider (1st party or 3rd party)
Browser session cookie or Stored cookie?
Duration
Settings
_pk_id
Stores a unique visitor ID.
1st party
Stored
13 months
_pk_ses
Session cookie temporarily stores data for the visit.
1st party
Stored
30 minutes
_pk_ref
Stores attribution information (the referrer that brought the visitor to the website).
1st party
Stored
6 months
_pk_testcookie
Temporary cookie to check if a visitor’s browser supports cookies (set in Internet Explorer only).
1st party
Stored
Temporary cookie that expires almost immediately after being set.

Additional Third-party cookies on ESO websites: some of our pages display content from external providers, e.g. YouTube.

Such third-party services are outside of ESO control and may, at any time, change their terms of service, use of cookies, etc.

YouTube: Some videos on the ESO website are embedded from ESO’s official YouTube channel. We have enabled YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode, meaning that no cookies are set unless the user actively clicks on the video to play it. Additionally, in this mode, YouTube does not store any personally identifiable cookie data for embedded video playbacks. For more details, please refer to YouTube’s embedding videos information page.

Cookies can also be classified based on the following elements.

Regarding the domain, there are:

As for their duration, cookies can be:

How to manage cookies

Cookie settings: You can modify your cookie choices for the ESO webpages at any time by clicking on the link Cookie settings at the bottom of any page.

In your browser: If you wish to delete cookies or instruct your browser to delete or block cookies by default, please visit the help pages of your browser:

Please be aware that if you delete or decline cookies, certain functionalities of our website may be not be available and your browsing experience may be affected.

You can set most browsers to prevent any cookies being placed on your device, but you may then have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site/page. And some services and functionalities may not work properly at all (e.g. profile logging-in, shop check out).

Updates to the ESO Cookies Policy

The ESO Cookies Policy may be subject to future updates, which will be made available on this page.

Additional information

For any queries related to cookies, please contact: pdprATesoDOTorg.

As ESO public webpages are managed by our Department of Communication, your questions will be dealt with the support of the said Department.