NASA extends Diwali greetings with picture of ‘celestial festival of lights’

Guwahati, Nov 13: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) extended Diwali greetings by sharing a captivating celestial image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday.

The US space agency refers to the globular cluster, situated 30,000 light-years away from Earth, as a "celestial festival of lights."

As per reports, a globular cluster is a stable, tightly bound cluster of tens of thousands to millions of stars and is associated with all types of galaxies.

"Happy #Diwali to all those who celebrate," NASA wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

"NASAHubble captured a celestial festival of lights -- a globular cluster -- 30,000 light-years away from Earth, near the dense and dusty center of our own Milky Way galaxy," it added.

“This globular cluster is unlike others, containing both old and young stars. Some of the older stars are almost as old as the universe itself, around 12 billion years old, while the younger stars are around 1-2 billion years old,” the space agency stated on Instagram.

While giving a description of the image, NASA said, “A globular cluster appears near the center of the frame, with many yellow stars huddled together. Blue and yellow stars dot the blackness of space, surrounding the image’s center.”